{"id":5120,"date":"2014-09-22T20:50:35","date_gmt":"2014-09-23T01:50:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=5120"},"modified":"2014-09-22T20:50:35","modified_gmt":"2014-09-23T01:50:35","slug":"morbid-fact-du-jour-for-september-22-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=5120","title":{"rendered":"Morbid Fact Du Jour for September 22, 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Frankish Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/strong><\/p>\n

In times of sickness, crusaders would often first pray to a saint’s toenail or some other body part to get well. \u00a0Relics were a prime cure-all, and each saint had his or her specialty: Saint Blaise for bones stuck in the throat, Saint Agatha to soothe sore breasts. \u00a0If that failed, they might turn to a local doctor. \u00a0Listen to this eyewitness account by a 12th century Arab doctor called in to consult with a European colleague. \u00a0(Remember that Arabs, who had preserved much Greek and Roman scholarship, were far superior in medicine and science at the time.)<\/p>\n

They took me [i.e., the Arab doctor] to see a knight who had an abscess on his leg, and a woman with consumption. \u00a0I applied a poultice to the leg and the abscess opened and began to heal. \u00a0I prescribed a cleansing and refreshing diet for the woman. \u00a0Then there appeared a Frankish (European) doctor, who said: ‘This man has no idea how to cure these people!’ \u00a0He turned to the knight and said: ‘Which would you prefer, to live with one leg or to die with two?’ \u00a0When the knight replied that he would prefer to live with one leg, he sent for a strong man and a sharp axe. \u00a0They arrived and I stood by to watch. \u00a0The doctor supported the leg on a block of wood, and said to the man: ‘Strike a mighty blow and cut it cleanly!’ \u00a0And there, before my eyes the fellow struck the knight one blow, and then another fore the first had not done the job. \u00a0The marrow spurted out of the leg, and the patient died instantaneously. \u00a0Then the doctor examined the woman and said: ‘She has a devil in her head who is in love with her. \u00a0Cut her hair off!’ \u00a0This was done, and she went back to eating her usual Frankish food, garlic and mustard which made her illness worse. \u00a0‘The devil has got into her brain,’ pronounced the doctor. \u00a0He took a razor and cut a cross on her head, and removed the brain so that the inside of her skull was laid bare. \u00a0This he rubbed with salt; the woman died instantly. \u00a0At this juncture, I asked whether they had any further need of me, and as they had none I came away, having learnt things about medical methods that I never knew before.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Culled from:\u00a0An Underground Education<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Frankish Yet Truly Morbid Fact! In times of sickness, crusaders would often first pray to a saint’s toenail or some other body part to get well. \u00a0Relics were a prime cure-all, and each saint had his or her specialty: Saint Blaise for bones stuck in the throat, Saint Agatha to soothe sore breasts. \u00a0If […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5120"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5121,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5120\/revisions\/5121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}