> "Magic" and "medicine" have been distinct for thousands of years in Europe.

Medicine and magic have been intertwined throughout human history, all over the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materia_medica

Not sure why you linked to that page, as it doesn't mention magic at all, unless I missed it, apart from this in the first paragraph:

"The Ebers papyrus is an ancient recipe book dated to approximately 1552 BC. It contains a mixture of magic and medicine with invocations to banish disease and a catalogue of useful plants, minerals, magic amulets and spells."

Materia medica was the old term for what is now pharmacology.

There's also this bit on Egyptian medicine:

"It contains a mixture of magic and medicine with invocations to banish disease and a catalogue of useful plants, minerals, magic amulets and spells."

So it doesn't, except when it does.

I'd also argue a lot of medicine employed 'magical thinking' such as efficacy from similarity. Herbs were recommended based on their physical similarity to organs or parts of the body. I don't think it's pejorative of early practitioners to point this out. Until empiricism and experimentalism there was no way to reliably clarify what worked and why.

> There's also this bit on Egyptian medicine:

> "It contains a mixture of magic and medicine with invocations to banish disease and a catalogue of useful plants, minerals, magic amulets and spells."

The sentence you seem to be saying I missed is one of the two I quoted.

> So it doesn't, except when it does.

Please don't do that on HN.