Wizarding World - Magic
Medicinal Magic

The Hospital Wing
A long line of beds, screens available for privacy, Madam Pomfrey's office is at one end. 
A painting on the wall shows a woman caring for a patient in a bed. The woman walks into the painting and sits down. (SS/f)

Medical Procedures and Spells
chocolate
potions

  • help Hermione lose the cat features
  • Skele-Gro - re-grew all the bones in Harry's arm after Lockhart removed them
  • Pepper Up potion - fights the common cold, but smoke comes out of the patient's hair for an hour afterwards; also used to warm up the Triwizard champions after they swam in the Lake for an hour in February.
  • clean wounds with a purple liquid that smoked and stung (GF20)
  • heal burns with an orange paste (GF20)
  • heals Neville's broken wrist in about a minute (SS
  • mandrake potion is used to revive patients who are petrified (CS
  • bubotubor pus, when used correctly, makes an excellent cure for stubborn forms of acne (GF
books of medicine-related magic
Common Magical Ailments and Afflictions

Other medical terms etc.
trained mediwizards at the World Cup (GF8)

  • 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
St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries
  • donation to by Lucius Malfoy got him Top Box seats at World Cup (GF8
  • Neville's parents are there (GF
diseases and injuries
  • dragon pox (QA3, fw25) 
  •  broken wrist (SS
  • dragon bite (SS) turns green and swells
Essay:
That Had To Hurt...Or Did It?
Steve Vander Ark

How can a one-year-old baby survive the destruction of his parents' home? Hey, a Killing Curse is one thing, but how could Harry block tons of bricks and wood crashing down on top of him? As if that weren't enough, the kid was on the second floor of the house! It would seem that Harry's surviving the destruction of his parents' house is an example of the fact that wizards have some sort of built-in protection against mundane accidental injury. They simply can't be killed as easily as Muggles. Here's a few examples from the books:

Neville's family thinks he may be a squib. In order to test him, his Great Uncle tries to surprise the little fellow by nearly killing him. He pushes him off a pier into the ocean, for example. Apparently, the magic-ness in him, if there is any, will manifest itself in a surprise of that kind. Then he gets dropped from an upper story window and he bounces! This built-in protection indicates to his family that he's in fact magical. in the Muggle world, this Great Uncle would be up on child endangerment charges. In the Wizarding World, there's a celebration.

Various Quidditch players are injured in spectacular ways, including, for example, ploughing into the ground at top speed. Krum takes a bowling-ball-sized iron ball to the face. In every case, they are not permanently injured and certainly not killed.

Neville again, this time in flying class. He falls fifty feet from a broomstick. Fifty feet. I don't care if he's falling onto grass, this kid should be dead. All that happens is a broken wrist. 

Hagrid's reaction to hearing that the Dursleys told Harry that his parents were killed in a car crash is particularly telling. He considers it laughable that anyone would think that a car crash could have killed them. Obviously, although car crashes seem all too deadly to us Muggles, Hagrid finds them of no concern at all. 

Notice too that Harry, before he even knew he was a wizard, saved himself from being pounded by Dudley and his friends by levitating to the top of the school (or was it Apparating!). It seems that wizards have the magical equivelent of "airbags," and when danger strikes, they instantly and without intention fire off some counter or pretection spell. It is also possible that they have a sense we Muggles don't recognize which alerts them to danger in advance. After all, Harry does seem to be able to sense people that he can't see (Snuffles, for example, and Winky and Crouch Jr. in the wood). Whatever the actual mechanics of it, wizards clearly are not injured as quickly as Muggles.

Must be nice.
 


original content © 2002 The Harry Potter Lexicon
HARRY POTTER, characters, names, and all related indicia are trademarks of Warner Bros. © 2001.
original artwork by Mary GrandPré © Warner Bros., used by permission
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original page date 7/18/01
last page update 7/8/02