Healing Magic

Healing or medical magic is a common form of magic. Healing magic is used by everyone from parents healing a child’s minor injuries using simple remedies found in the book The Healer’s Helpmate to trained Healers and Mediwizards handling complicated and fantastic magical injuries and mishaps at St. Mungo’s Hospital.

Medical Professionals

Healers are the doctors of the Wizarding world (OP23, OP30, TBB/FFF)

Trained mediwizards stand by at the World Cup to deal with injuries (GF8). The mediwizards:

• are ready to revive Lynch with cups of potion
• tried to help Krum, but he didn’t want any help
• blasted a path through battling leprechauns and veela to assist the injured

According to the Daily Prophet, Witch Doctors are employed by professional Quidditch teams as trainers (DP1).

Diseases and Injuries:

Cuts

• Hippogriff talon scratch on arm (Draco, PA6)
• Sectumsempra cuts – bleeding stopped by Snape with chant-like incantation, then dittany prescribed for scarring (Draco, HBP24)
• Ear removal by Sectumsempra (George, DH5)
• Dragon bite (Ron, PS14) turned green and swelled
• Cuts from being beaten on the hand with a belt (Credence Barebone), cured by rubbing finger over cuts, no incantation by Percival Graves/Grindelwald (WFT).

Broken Bones

• ankle (Ginny, OP38)
• arm (Harry, DH5)
• leg (Ron, PA21)
• nose (Krum, GF8; Neville, OP38)
• ribs (Harry, DH5)
• skull (Harry, HBP19)
• wrist (Neville, PS9)
• teeth – regrow them if missing (Harry, DH5)

Bites

• Snakebite wound that won’t close naturally because Nagini was a magical snake (OP22)
• Werewolf bite (PA18, OP22) – induces lycanthropy, an incurable condition but controllable with modern healing (Wolfsbane Potion)
• Murtlap bite (Jacob Kowalski, WFT)

Diseases / Curses

• Horcrux effect of Dumbledore’s cursed withered hand, death postponed for one year by Snape (DH33)
• Curse Malediction causing illness through generations of a family (Astoria Greengrass Malfoy, CC4.3)
• Scrofungulus, which is contagious (OP22)
• Vanishing sickness, which is contagious (OP22)
• Dragon Pox which can be fatal (Elphias Doge DH2, Abraxas Malfoy HBP9, Euphemia and Fleamont Potter Pm, QA3, FW)
• Gunhilda Kneen had to sit out a Quidditch match due to a case of Dragon Pox in the 1100s (QA3)
• Chauncey Oldridge is credited with being the first known victim of Dragon Pox, but this was in the 1300s (fw25).
• Gunhilda of Gorsemoor, the famous healer, developed a cure for Dragon Pox in the late 1500s/early 1600s (fw37)
• Dragon Pox is treated on the second floor of St. Mungo’s (OP22)
• Dragon Pox is contagious, but even after a patient is past that stage he or she will have greenish skin and pockmarked skin (DH2)
• Spattergroit – a malady which causes a person to develop spots on their face. A portrait of a medieval healer in the stairwell of St. Mungo’s tried to stop Ron and tell him he had spattergroit. Ron angrily told the painting that it was only freckles, but the healer prescribed the following:
  

  “[T]ake the liver of a toad, bind it tight about your throat, stand naked at the full moon in a barrel of eels’ eyes…”

A variety of magical maladies are in evidence in the waiting room of St. Mungo’s (OP22):

• small child who had sprouted huge feathery wings
• man who was wearing jinxed shoes which ate his feet
• a man whose head rang like a bell whenever he moved his head
• a woman whose head had been made into something like a “teapot” – she whistled and gave off steam, and her face was red and sweaty
• people with strange things growing out of them, such as an elephant’s trunk

Healing in the Hogwarts Hospital Wing:

Hogwarts School has a Hospital Wing staffed by a school Matron (Nurse). During Harry’s years at Hogwarts the school Matron was Madam Pomfrey. Maladies at Hogwarts often involve magic gone a bit awry, since the students are not completely trained to use their magic. As Hagrid puts it,

“I mean, it’s always bin a bit of a risk sendin a kid ter Hogwarts, hasn’ it? Yer expect accidents, don’ yeh, with hundreds of underage wizards all locked up tergether…” (HBP19)

Madam Pomfrey has handled things like curing Hermione of the cat features she grew after a Polyjuice Potion accident (CS13), Ron’s dragon bite, petrified students and ghosts, and a simple broken wrist from a broom flying accident (PS9), along with what must be a huge variety of Quidditch injuries.

Potions and other treatments used:

• Mandrake Restorative Draft
• Bubotuber pus, when used correctly, makes an excellent cure for stubborn forms of acne (GF13)
• Blood-Replenishing Potion
• Purple Sleeping Potion
• Strained and pickled Murtlap Tentacles
• Calming Draught
• Wound-cleaning potion
• Burn-healing paste
• Dr Ubbly’s Oblivious Unction – Given to Ron by Madam Pomfrey to cure bad thoughts and memories from the battle of the Department of Mysteries – (OP38)
• Skele-Gro was used when Lockhart removed bones from Harry’s arm (CS10)
• Pepperup potion is used to fight the common cold. A side effect is steam coming out of the patient’s ears for an hour afterwards. Pepper-Up is also used to warm up the Triwizard champions after they swam in the Lake for an hour in February. Invented by Glover Hipworth (FW)
• Swooping Evil Venom can help people heal from bad memories. Newt Scamander asked Frank the Thunderbird to drop a vial of venom into a rainstorm over New York City to erase the upsetting memories of No-Majs who had witnessed destruction by an Obscurial in 1926 (WFT).

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