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<\/a>The tell-tale buboes.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n Many explanations were inevitably offered:\u00a0 God in His wisdom had sent plague to punish mankind for its sins; it might be the result of planetary conjunctions; amongst the ‘natural causes’, alterations in the environment could cause a ‘pestilential atmosphere’ resulting from effluvia, vapors from stagnant pools, dungheaps, decaying corpses, the breath of sufferers themselves – or poisoning of the air by ‘enemies’ such as Jews.\u00a0 Laymen like Boccaccio referred to contagion, but most medical theorists, loyal to their Greek learning, stood by constitutional factors: if the body was robust, illness should not result; if not, one would sicken and die.<\/p>\n Responses depended upon which theory was accepted. If the plague was truly God-sent, only prayer and fasting could be effective.\u00a0 This encouraged flagellant bands to trudge from town to town, whipping each other, hoping by their lashings and denunciations of Jews and sinners to propitiate divine wrath; which in turn sparked persecution of Jews, who were accused of poisoning the wells.\u00a0 In Basel, Jews were penned up in a wooden building and burnt alive; 2000 were said to have been slaughtered in Strasbourg and 12,000 in Mainz; while in July 1349 the flagellants led the burghers of Frankfurt into the Jewish quarter for a wholesale massacre.\u00a0 But, however pious, the flagellants themselves posed a serious threat to public order by creating panic and challenging authority, leading Pope Clement VI to prohibit them.<\/p>\n Seeking to protect themselves with long leather gowns, gauntlets and masks with snouts stuffed with aromatic herbs, physicians put the accent on individual treatment, on the assumption that plague involved atmospheric putrefaction.\u00a0 They recommended sniffing amber-scented nosegays and pomanders and administering strong-smelling herbs – aloes, dittany, myrrh and pimpernel, all supposed to have cleansing properties, to say nothing of those princes of pharmacy, mithridatium and theriac.\u00a0 Fires should be lit and rooms fumigated with aromatic wood or vinegar.\u00a0 Writing in 1401, the Florentine doctor Lapo Mazzei (1350-1412) suggested “it would help you to drink, a quarter of an hour before dinner, a full half-glass of good red wine, neither too dry nor too sweet.”\u00a0 [Some things never change – DeSpair, pouring a glass of the good stuff<\/em>]<\/p>\n Culled from:\u00a0The Greatest Benefit to Mankind<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Here\u2019s another excerpt from\u00a0Malformed: Forgotten Brains of the Texas State Mental Hospital.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nThe Flagellants, Doing Their Part<\/em><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nThe Ever-Stylish Plague Doctor<\/em><\/p>\nMalformed Brain Du Jour!<\/h3>\n