Livre d'Or

Yup, I definitely sympathize with your reaction to this. The whole field of Medical Education is a whole lot about trying to get by as a positivist in a constructivist / constructionist (I am not completely clear on the difference, even) world. Some of it does feel useful, like for example I'm supposed to be teaching the med students how to be "professionals" and I'm pretty comfortable with the idea that the quality of professionalism is almost entirely a social construct. But yes, there is a massive mountain of technical vocabulary which doesn't sound like technical vocabulary, it sounds like normal everyday words used in a completely different way from their natural sense.

I think whether or not one accepts Blank's philosophical underpinnings, it's interesting to learn about some of the historical factors which contributed to modern ideas about sexual orientation and romance and gender categories and stuff. I don't think it matters very much whether pre-twentieth century people were really "straight" on a philosophical level.