Nothing New Under the Sun

“In the year… there made its appearance that deadly pestilence, which whether disseminated by the influence of the celestial bodies, or sent upon us mortals by God in His just wrath by way of retribution for our inequities, had had its origins some years before in the East, whence, after destroying an innumerable multitude of living beings, it had propagated itself without respite from place to place, and so, calamitously, had spread into the West…

Despite all that human wisdom and forethought could devise to avert it, as the cleansing of the city from many impurities by officials appointed for the purpose, the refusal of entrance to all sick folk, and the adoption of many precautions for the preservation of health, despite also humble supplication addressed to God, and often repeated both in public procession and otherwise, by the devout; toward the beginning of the spring of that year the doleful effects of the pestilence began to be horribly apparent by symptoms that showed as if miraculous…

Which malady seemed to set entirely at naught both the art of the physicians and the virtues of physic; indeed, whether it was that the disorder was of a nature or defy such treatment, or that the physicians were at fault—besides the qualified there was not a multitude both of men and of women who practiced without having received the slightest tincture of medical science—and, being in ignorance of is source, failed to apply the proper remedies…

Moreover, the virulence of the pest was the greater by reason that intercourse was apt to convey it from the sick to the whole, just as fire devours things dry to greasy when they are brought close to it. Nay, the evil went yet further, for not merely by speech or association with the sick as the malady communicated to the healthy with consequent peril of common death; but any that touched the cloth of the sick or aught else that had been touched or used by them, seemed thereby to contract the disease…

Such was the energy of the contagion of the said pestilence, that it was not merely propagate from man to man but, what is much more startling, it was frequently observed that things which had belonged to one sick or dead of the disease, if touched by some other living creature, not of the human species, were the occasion, not only of sickening, but of an almost instantaneous death…

Proper http://deeprootsmag.org/category/departments/bordercrossings/ discount levitra breathing techniques are firmly rooted in these philosophies. Upon application of the lotion, it’s claimed to work cialis without prescription within 10 to 30 seconds. Thus, it is vital that cialis prescription online if you feel no pleasure or lack of it during intercourse, resulting in ED, the problem may be medical, rather mental health related. One more component that accelerates the threat is smoking cigarettes; a distinct habitual pattern that many men and girls grow to canadian cialis pharmacy be acustomed these days. In which circumstances, not to speak of many others of a similar or even graver complexion, divers apprehensions and imaginations were engendered in the minds of such as were left alive, including almost all of them to the same harsh resolution, to wit, to shun and abhor all contact with the sick and all that belonged to them, thinking thereby each to make his own health secure. Among whom were those who thought that to live temperately and avoid all excess would count for much as a preservative against seizure of this kind. Wherefore they banded together, and dissociating themselves from all others, formed communities in houses where there were no sick, and lived a separate and secluded life, which they regulated with the utmost care, avoiding every kind of luxury and drinking very moderately of the most delicate viands and the finest wines, holding converse with none but one another, lest tidings of sickness or death should reach them, and diverting their minds with music and such other delights as they could devise. Others, the bias of whose minds was in the opposite direction, maintained that to drink freely, frequent places of public resort, and take their pleasure with song and revel, sparing to satisfy no appetite, and to laugh and mock at no event, was the sovereign remedy for so great an evil: and that which they affirmed they also put in practice, so far they were able, resorting day and night, now to this tavern, now to that, drinking with an entire disregard of rule or measure, and by preference making the house of others, as it were, their inns, if they but saw in them aught that was particularly to their taste or liking; which they were readily able to do, because the owners, seeing death imminent, had become as reckless of their property as of their lives; so that most of the houses were open to all comers… Thus, adhering ever to heir inhuman determination to shun the sick, as far as possible, they ordered their life. In this extremity of our city’s suffering and tribulation the venerable authority of laws, human and divine, was abased and all but totally dissolved, for lack of those who should have administered and enforced them, most of whom, like the rest of the citizens, were either dead or sick, or so hard bested for servants that they were unable to execute any office; whereby every man was free to do what was right in his own eyes.

Not a few there were who belonged to neither of the two said parties but kept a middle course between them, neither laying the same restraint upon their diet as the former, not allowing themselves the same license in drinking and other dissipations at the latter, but living with a degree of freedom sufficient to satisfy their appetites, and not as recluses. They therefore walked abroad, carrying in their hands flowers or fragrant herbs or divers sorts of spices, which they frequently raised to their noses, deeming it an excellent thing thus to comfort the grain with such perfumes, because the air seemed to be everywhere laden and reeking with the stench emitted by the dead and the dying and the odors of drugs.

Some again, the most sound, perhaps, in judgment, as they were also the harshest in temper of all, affirmed that there was no medicine for the disease superior or equal in efficacy to flight; following which prescription a multitude of men and women, negligent of all but themselves, deserted their city, their houses, their estate, their kinsfolk, their goods, and went into voluntary exile, or migrated to the country parts, as if God in visiting men with this pestilence in requital of their iniquities would not pursue them with His wrath, wherever they might be, intended the destruction of such alone as remained within the circuit of the walls of the city; or deeming, perchance, that it was now time for all to flee from it, and that its last hour was come.

Of the adherents of these various opinions not all died, neither did all escape; but rather there were, of each sort and in every place, many that sickened, and by those who retained their health were rated after the example which they themselves, while whole, had set, being everywhere left to languish in almost total neglect. Tedious were it to recount how citizen avoided citizen, now among neighbors was scarce fond any that shewed fellow-feeling for another, how kinsmen held aloof, and never met, or but rarely; enough that this sore affliction entered so deep into the minds of men and women, that in the horror therefore brother was forsaken by brother, nephew by uncle, brother by sister, and often times husbands by wife; nay, what is more, and scarcely to be believed, fathers and mothers were found to abandon their own children, untended unvisited, to their fate, as if they had been strangers. Wherefore the sick of both sexes, whose number could not be estimated, were left without resource but in the charity of friends (and few such there were), or in the interest of servants, who were hardly to be had at high rates and on unseemly terms… In consequence of which dearth of servants and dereliction of the sick by neighbors, kinsfolk and friends, it came to pass—a thing, perhaps never before heard of that no woman, however dainty, fair or well-born she might be, shrank, when stricken with the disease, from the ministrations of a man, no matter whether he were young or no, or scrupled to expose to him every part of her body, with no more shame than if he had been a woman, submitting of necessity to that which her malady required; whereupon, perchance, there resulted in after some loss of modesty in such as recovered. Besides which many succumbed, who with proper attendance would, perhaps, have escaped death; so that, what with the virulence of the plague and the lack of due tendance of the sick, the multitude of the deaths that daily and nightly took place in the city, was such that those who heard the tale–not to say witnessed the fact—were struck dumb with amazement.”

You thought there is anything new under the sun? Think again.