To reduce a person to the level of physical stuff conjures the gruesome scandals of cannibalism that inhabit the 'dim dark past'. In case this seems too far fetched, let's examine a domain where such pleasures are not out of place. Woodwork Staying in Fitzroy, we move from St Vincent's Hospital to the Victorian College of Woodcraft. Yet here too, the pleasures of manual labour are subject to technology. Woodwork's equivalent to the lithotripter is the laser cutter.
Laser cutting enables the shape of the wood to be determined by computer programming.
The woodworker's hands are largely free then to concern themselves with problems of design. But when I approached the surgeon equivalent in this process, there was greater scepticism. A resident woodworker unfolded the limits of the laser in three layers. But this is only a technical matter. There is also something about the grain of solid timber which makes a laser inappropriate.