Medicine in the Middle Ages: Extracts from "Le Moyen Age Medical" by Dr. Edmond Dupouy; translated by T. C. MinorDupouy, Edmond
History
Medicine in the Middle Ages: Extracts from "Le Moyen Age Medical" by Dr. Edmond Dupouy; translated by T. C. Minor
Dupouy, Edmond
Medicine, Medieval
In the recital of the miseries of the Middle Age, made by a master
hand, by an illustrious historian, who bases his assertions on antique
chronicles whose veracity cannot be questioned, we read the following:
“Society was impressed with a profound sentiment of sadness, it was
as though a pall of grief covered the generation; the whole world
given over to plagues; the invasion by barbarians; horrible diseases;
terrible famines decimating the masses by starvation; violent wind
storms; greyish skies with foggy days; the darkness of night casting
its shroud everywhere; a cry of lamentation ascends to Heaven through
all this gruesome period. That sombre witness, our contemporary Glaber,
fully indicates the position of society devoured by war, famine and the
plague. It was thought that the order of seasons and the laws of the
elements, that up to that period governed the world, had fallen back
into the original chaos. It was thought that the end of the human race
had arrived.”[65]
When the epidemic of Demonomania attacked the earth, at the end of
the fifteenth century, more than ten generations had undergone the
depressive action of the superstitions and false ideas spread broadcast
by religion. Heredity had prepared the earth, the human mind being in
an absolute condition of receptivity for all pathological actions. The
education of children was confined to teaching them foolish doctrines,
diabolical legends, mysterious practices that weakened their judgments.
With the progression, from childhood to majority, a vague sentiment
of uneasiness was experienced with a constant preoccupation on the
subject of conscience and sin. In full adult age, as we have observed,
came religious monomania, with acute sexual excitement, and persistent
erotic ideas.
Arriving at this phase of the situation, some became theomaniacs,
others demonomaniacs, saying they were possessed by sorcery, under the
influence of genesic and other senses, with psychal hallucinations, and
in some cases, psycho-sensorial illusions. These fictitious perception
were produced either through the influence of the mind, assailed by
supernatural conceptions, or by morbid impressions transmitted most
often by the great sympathetic, or, finally, by an unknown action
arising from the exterior.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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