From: hounddog23x@gmail.com   
      
   Very Ancient Origin of Contagionism   
   by Peter Morrell   
       
   "Interestingly Fracastoro the physician-poet from Verona (who christened   
   Syphilis the French disease) had proposed a germ theory of disease in 1546,   
   one hundred years before Leeuwenhoek's ground breaking discoveries under the   
   microscope." [1]   
      
       
      
   Some conceptual errors seem to have crept into this account. The idea of   
   contagion entirely precedes the discovery of bacteria and is very ancient. Of   
   course, the germ theory was conceived many centuries before germs were   
   physically detected with    
   microscopes. Scientists and medics seem too eager to accept as gospel the most   
   simplistic 'external teachings', while condemning our ancestors as befuddled   
   old fools who knew nothing. In fact, ancient peoples had a much more subtle   
   mentality and rather    
   than being so easily bedazzled by the simple, superficial glance that   
   satisfies people today, they clearly understood the deeper internal workings   
   of things as a complex, living reality.   
      
   "Rudimentary modern concepts such as bacteria, toxins, personal cleanliness,   
   and public sanitation were either unknown and largely absent from the social   
   database. Quarantines were common and had been utilized for hundreds of years,   
   but the scientific    
   idea of contagion was confused and interrelated with religion, piety, sin, and   
   "God's Justice." [2]   
      
   The germ theory first arose in very ancient times as a conception that disease   
   is passed around in some nebulous manner between and amongst people. This   
   attitude was most obvious for the clear contagions like Plague and Leprosy   
   [later Cholera] of which    
   people were understandably very fearful.   
      
   "Guy de Chauliac concerning...the Black Death: 'it was so contagious...that   
   even by looking at one another people caught it.'..." [3]   
      
       
   Guy de Chauliac   
      
   This primitive form of 'contagionism' was found in all cultures and was   
   intrinsically a form of taboo, holding that even though an ill person is   
   primarily ill for their own inner, spiritual, God-driven reasons, they should   
   still be avoided because they    
   carry, in some mysterious way, the 'seeds' or 'vapours' of the disease, which   
   can be passed on to others. This was called the miasmata theory of ill-airs   
   and strange vapours that can pass among the populace. By no means an   
   unreasonable conception, it    
   derived in an evidence-based manner, mostly from observation and experience of   
   epidemics, admittedly laced with certain religious concepts. Whether a   
   microscope later provided confirmation for such a conception in the minds of   
   men is, of course, rather    
   superfluous to the general validity of the conception itself, which vastly   
   predates the actual microscopes themselves.   
      
   The discovery of physical 'infective particles' need not be regarded as   
   confirmation of the ancient idea of contagion, but might be seen as a separate   
   idea altogether, one fundamentally different in modern therapeutics compared   
   to the more ancient idea    
   of contagion that preceded it. Thus, a rather subtle and spiritual conception   
   became displaced by a crude and materialistic one - a pattern that keeps   
   repeating itself down to modern times. The idea of contagion more properly   
   belongs to the magical    
   worldview, a view that minutely scrutinises phenomena and always looks for   
   anomalies or non-conformities in the world. A view holding that all   
   non-conformities contain pattern and meaning, have power and that this power   
   can be utilised or transmitted -    
   being passed around through contact.   
      
   There are numerous examples of the power of an anomaly. The albino in Africa   
   is an anomaly who is revered as a god. The weapon that killed someone is an   
   anomaly. The place where the slaughter took place has power and contagion.   
   Prayers are intoned and    
   flowers placed at the site of an accident. Candles are lit for the dead.   
   Churches are filled with perfume. Holy water is sprinkled. Cathedrals are   
   filled with light and music. Ointment is rubbed into the sword as well as the   
   wound it caused. A rationale    
   lies behind all such actions. A pervasive and profound notion of resonance   
   abounds in the magical worldview and lies at the heart of this whole matter of   
   contagion. Write it all off as superstitious nonsense if you like, but this   
   sense of resonance    
   touches everything, interconnecting them in an unseen web of links between   
   events, people, places, concepts, objects, practices. Nothing happens without   
   a [spiritual] cause and everything affects everything else. What if ought has   
   medicine truly gained    
   from science? And what has it lost?   
      
   Even in fame and celebrity, the idea of contagion persists. John Lennon's   
   piano or Mercedes must have some special power. A guitar once owned by Eric   
   Clapton. The bedroom where Marilyn Monroe died. The baseball that won a whole   
   series. Erroll Flynn's    
   jockstrap. These are all examples of objects deemed to be suffused with some   
   invisible and special power. They are unusual to the degree that they   
   possessed special power once and so mysteriously must still contain a fading   
   vestige of it. They are    
   anomalies. A superstitious mode of thinking, that we all innately possess,   
   contends that they still possess this power and will always possess it, and   
   that we can annoint ourselves with it somehow and so sanctify our lives.   
   Getting close to the rich and    
   famous is thus as alluring a pursuit as ever.   
      
   Similarly, the sick person is a type of non-conformity - a deviation from   
   normality - and represents a puzzle to the magical mind - a puzzle capable of   
   solution. The sick person has a power that can affect others. This was well   
   known to ancient and    
   medieval people. Plague and leprosy were especially feared not only as great   
   killers, but of being passed on to people coming into close contact with the   
   sufferer, such as neighbours and members of the same family.   
      
   "With few exceptions the contemporary sources, medical and lay, that discuss   
   the various outbreaks of pestilential disease in the later Middle Ages reveal   
   a strong belief in the extremely contagious nature of the 'pest'..." [4]   
      
   Malaria, Typhus and Cholera were associated with damp or foul places. Leprosy   
   and Syphilis were deemed to be basically sexual in origin, and thus a whiff of   
   wickedness surrounded anyone contracting them. Deviantised in this way by   
   their condition, they    
   had to be isolated from everyone else.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)