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... lourdes of bleeding, new postures for sleeping and many other remedies. The very rich are trying medicines made of gold and pearls. The terrible truth is that nothing seems to work. Flight is the best option, and if one cannot fly, then all that remains is resignation and prayer.
The Medieval Miracles of Healing -- Medical Science So it was that, throughout antiquity, during the early history of the Church, throughout the Middle Ages, and indeed down to a comparatively recent period, testimony to miraculous interposition's which would now be laughed at by a schoolboy was accepted by the leaders of thought. St. Augustine was certainly one of the strongest minds in the early Church, and yet we find him mentioning, with much seriousness, a story that sundry innkeepers of his time put a drug into cheese which metamorphosed travellers into domestic animals, and asserting that the peacock is so favoured by the Almighty that its flesh will not decay, and that he has tested it and knows this to be a fact. With such a disposition regarding the wildest stories, it is not surprising that the assertion of St. Gregory of Nazianzen, during the second century, as to the cures wrought by the martyrs Cosmo and Damian, was echoed from all parts of Europe until every hamlet had its miracle-working saint or relic.
The literature of these miracles is simply endless. To take our own ancestors alone, no one can read the Ecclesiastical History of Bede, or Abbot Samson's Miracles of St. Edmund, or the accounts given by Easier and Osborn of the miracles of St. Dunstan, or the long lists of those wrought by Thomas a Becket, or by any other in the army of English saints, without seeing the perfect naturalness of this growth. This evolution of miracle in all parts of Europe came out of a vast preceding series of beliefs, extending not merely through the early Church but far back into paganism. Just as formerly patients were cured in the temples of sculpins, so they were cured in the Middle Ages, and so they are cured now at the shrines of saints.
Just as the ancient miracles were solemnly attested by votive tablets, giving names, dates, and details, and these tablets hung before the images of the gods, so the medieval miracles were attested by similar tablets hung before the images of the saints; and so they are attested to-day by similar tablets hung before the images of Our Lady of La Salette or of Lourdes. Just as faith in such miracles persisted, in spite of the small percentage of cures at those ancient places of healing, so faith persists to-day, despite the fact that in at least ninety per cent of the cases at Lourdes prayers prove unavailing. As a rule, the miracles of the sacred books were taken as models, and each of those given by the sacred chroniclers was repeated during the early ages of the Church and through the medieval period with endless variations of circumstance, but still with curious fidelity to the original type. It should be especially kept in mind that, while the vast majority of these were doubtless due to the myth-making faculty and to that development of legends which always goes on in ages ignorant of the relation between physical causes and effects, some of the miracles of healing had undoubtedly some basis in fact.
We in modern times have seen too many cures performed through influences exercised upon the imagination, such as those of the Jansenists at the Cemetery of St. Medal, of the Ultramontanes at La Salette and Lourdes, of the Russian Father Ivan at St. Petersburg, and of various Protestant sects at Old Orchard and elsewhere, as well as at sundry camp meetings, to doubt that some cures, more or less permanent, were wrought by sainted personages in the early Church and throughout the Middle Ages. There are undoubtedly serious lesions which yield to profound emotion and vigorous exertion born of persuasion, confidence, or excitement.
The wonderful power of the mind over the body is known to every observant student. Mr. Herbert Spencer dwells upon the fact that intense feeling or passion may bring out great muscular force. Dr. Berdoe reminds us that: a gouty man who has long hobbled about on his crutch, finds his legs and power to run with them if pursued by a wild bull. and that the feeblest invalid, under the influence of delirium or other strong excitement, will astonish her nurse by the sudden accession of strength.
But miraculous cures were not ascribed to persons merely. Another growth, developed by the early Church mainly from germs in our sacred books, took shape in miracles wrought by streams, by pools of water, and especially by relics. Here, too, the old types persisted, and just as we find holy and healing wells, pools, and streams in all other ancient religions, so we find in the evolution of our own such examples as Norman the Syrian cured of leprosy by bathing in the river Jordan, the blind man restored to sight by washing in the pool of Siloam, and the healing of those who touched the bones of Elisha, the shadow of St. Peter, or the handkerchief of St. Paul. St.
Cyril, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and other great fathers of the early Church, sanctioned the belief that similar efficacy was to be found in the relics of the saints of their time; hence, St. Ambrose declared that ''the precepts of medicine are contrary to celestial science, watching, and prayer, '' and we find this statement reiterated from time to time throughout the Middle Ages. From this idea was evolved that fetichism which we shall see for ages standing in the way of medical science.
Theology, developed in accordance with this idea, threw about all cures, even those which resulted from scientific effort, an atmosphere of supernaturalism. The vividness with which the accounts of miracles in the sacred books were realized in the early Church continued the idea of miraculous intervention throughout the Middle Ages. The testimony of the great fathers of the Church to the continuance of miracles is overwhelming; but everything shows that they so fully expected miracles on the slightest occasion as to require nothing which in these days would be regarded as adequate evidence. In this atmosphere of theology thought medical science was at once checked. The School of Alexandria, under the influence first of Jews and later of Christians, both permeated with Oriental ideas, and taking into their theory of medicine demons and miracles, soon enveloped everything in mysticism.
In the Byzantine Empire of the East the same cause produced the same effect; the evolution of ascertained truth in medicine, begun by Hippocrates and continued by Herophilus, seemed lost forever. Medical science, trying to advance, was like a ship becalmed in the Sargasso Sea: both the atmosphere about it and the medium through which it must move resisted all progress. Instead of reliance upon observation, experience, experiment, and thought, attention was turned toward supernatural agencies. Far from the deadliest epidemic.
The Bubonic Plague. Just mention the name and you will send shivers down the spine of many people. There is no doubt that this disease was deadly. Deadly and gruesome to watch. The death rate was 90 % for those exposed to the bacterium. It was transmitted by the fleas from infected Old English black rats.
The symptoms were clear: swollen lymph nodes (buboes, hence the name), high fever, and delirium. In the worst case, the lungs became infected and the pneumonic form was spread from person to person by coughing, sneezing, or simply talking. From the time of infection to death was less than one week. There were three major epidemics - in the 6 th, 14 th, and 17 th centuries. The death toll was 137 million victims.
As a result, the plague is considered to be the worst epidemic of all time, but it wasn't (not that we are downplaying the severity of the plague). At its worst, the bubonic plague killed 2 million victims a year. This is certainly a bad situation, but there is one that is worse. The pandemic (an epidemic that is spread worldwide) that killed at least 25 million people in one year. A disease that is largely forgotten. A disease that occurred in the 20 th century!
I know what you " re thinking - AID's, Syphilis, or the dreaded Ebola. All are wrong. It was the influenza of 1918 - 1919, right after World War I (the war killed 9 million men in 4 years) This was no minor disease - everyone on the planet was at risk. And it was started right here in the good old U. S. of A.
In one year, nearly twenty million cases were reported in the United States, accounting for almost one million deaths. The cause is still unknown, but is believed to have been a mutated swine virus. It all started on the morning of March 11, 1918 at Camp Function, Kansas. A company cook named Albert Mitchell reported to the infirmary with typical flu-like symptoms - a low-grade fever, mild sore throat, slight headache, and muscle aches.
Bed rest was recommended. By noon, 107 soldiers were sick. Within two days, 522 people were sick. Many were gravely ill with severe pneumonia. Then reports started coming in from other military bases around the country. Thousands of sailors docked off the East Coast were sick.
Within a week, the influenza was hitting isolated places, such as the island of Alcatraz. Whatever the cause, it was clearly airborne. Within seven days, every state in the Union had been infected. Then it spread across the Atlantic. By April, French troops and civilians were infected. By mid-April, the disease had spread to China and Japan.
By May, the virus was spread throughout Africa and South America. The actual killer was the pneumonia that accompanied the infection. In Philadelphia, 158 out of every 1000 people died. 148 out of 1000 in Baltimore. 109 out of 1000 in Washington, D. C...
The good news (if there was any) was that the disease peaked within two to three weeks after showing up in a given city. It left as quickly as it arrived. The United States death toll was a total of 850, 000 people, making it an area of the world that was least devastated by this virus. Sixty percent of the Eskimo population was wiped out in Nome, Alaska. 80 - 90 % of the Samoan population was infected, many of the survivors dying from starvation (they lacked the energy to feed themselves). Luxury ocean liners from Europe would arrive in New York with 7 % less passengers than they embarked with. The confined area of the ship was especially conducive to the spread of the disease.
In the end, 25 million people had died. Some estimates put the number as high as 37 million
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Research essay sample on Bubonic Plague Middle Ages
