Ruminating on the Black Plague While Washing Me Socks

Well, here I am in Mississauga, just outside of Toronto washing my socks in the sink and drying them on the radiator.  Air Canada managed, somehow, to lose my bag for more than 24 hours on a direct flight from Vancouver to Toronto.  But they’ve authorized me to spend $50 on toothpaste and stuff.  And—here’s something that might be useful for you at some point—many credit cards, including mine fortunately, have insurance on them.  I get $500 coverage for delayed baggage, so at least I can buy myself a shirt, some pants, a warm shirt and some skivvies.

In other news, the hotel charged me $3.50 for a to-go coffee this morning.  Are you guys kidding me?

So as I’m sitting here watching my socks dry on the radiator I thought I’d grab the paddles, yell “Clear” and try to bring this damn blog back from the dead.  We’ll see if the it gets the heartbeat going again or just spikes the EKG before eternal flatline.

It’s not my fault; just my nature.  I’m easily distracted by shiny baubles and a dozen lives stretch out behind me like so many jackets tried on and cast aside.  Adam the Good Student, Adam the Wayward Teenager, Adam the Bartender Party Animal, Adam the Engineer, Adam the Anarchist, Adam the Musician, Adam the Government Worker, Adam the Writer and Poet, Adam the Caver, Adam Goes to Afghanistan, Adam the Boss, Adam the Sporty Dad.  So Adam the Philosophical Blogger, was destined to join the scrap heap with the rest of the outfits I’ve tried on in search of Me.  

Maybe it's like Kurt Vonnegut said, Be careful what you pretend to be, because you are what you pretend to be.

But enough about me, what do you think about me?

I just finished The Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, a Pulitzer Prize winner by Siddhartha Mukherjee.   If you want to know how to pronounce his name, click the link below:

Mukherjee  is an oncologist, so he knows whereof he speaks.  No, I don’t have cancer.  Or, rather, I may have, but I’m not aware of it.  I just have an enduring fascination (keeping in mind that “enduring” for me means “greater than one year”) with the mechanics of the human cell.  I’ve written previously on the subject, specifically on the fatal relationship between aging and cancer (Mindfingers: Immortality and Cancer).

The book was very good on many levels—the diabolically difficult task of trying to conquer a disease caused by one of your own cells going rogue; the politics of the great tobacco company battles of the 60s and 70s; the hopes of so many “cures” dashed, like radical mastectomies and chemotherapy; the bleeding edge of genetically engineered drugs.

I was especially interested in the sections on medieval treatment of cancer, though.  They had some funny ideas back in the Old Days.  Not “funny ha-ha” but “funny-that’s-so-gross-I’m-going-to-hurl-my-supper.”  One of these ideas was that the body was made up of four fluids, or humours:  blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile.  Any illness was brought about by a surplus or deficiency of one or more of these humours.  No less than Hippocrates (of Hippocratic Oath fame) popularized this idea, and its sway over medicine continued until the mid-19^th century when the theory of cell pathology became popular.  Apparently, the idea predated even ancient Hoppocrates and can be traced back to the Mesopatamians (Humorism).

Mesopatamian.  The only thing harder than that to say drunk is “No really, I shouldn’t sing karaoke.”

Anyways, enough humour, back to the humours.  Too much blood brought about inflammation and fever.  Of course, many wounds and diseases of the day resulted in inflammation and fever.  These people were commonly bled.  This resulted, I’m sure, in a higher mortality rate than the non-bled but nobody ever seemed to notice.  One of the reason the bubonic plague of the 1400s was so bad in Europe was that the wretched victims were bled.  In the Muslim lands, boils were lanced which actually helped. Perhaps occasionally, some gormless traveller from the East would mention that the Muslims seemed to have a better handle on this thing, but then he’d be tied to the stake and burned alive as a heretic. 

With respect to the Black Plague, the Christians and Muslims had one thing in common though—they both blamed the Jews.  Quel surprise! Meanwhile a group of particularly observant Christians, the Flagellants, were literally thrashing themselves  to death daily with iron-studded whips to purge themselves of the sin that caused the plague.  And, not counting the God of Abraham’s plagues,  catapulting plague-riven corpses into walled cities is perhaps history’s earliest example of biological warfare.  Anyways, the bottom line is that the Christians, Muslims and Jews were all killing each other, and the Black Plague was killing all of them indiscriminately.  See what I mean about funny.  OK, that’s a little dark, but I have no change of clothes for tomorrow and I’m washing my socks in the sink here.  Anyways, where was I?

One of the interesting things is lingering impression medieval medicine has left on the English language today.  A bad balance of humours led not only to physical pathology but also affected moods and behaviour.  Too much phlegm made you sluggish, and today we have the adjective phlegmatic, meaning “unemotional and calm.”  Too much yellow bile put you in a foul mood, and today we have the word bilious meaning “unpleasant or ill natured.”    Blood was associated with courage and hope, thus the adjective sanguine (Old French for “blood”) meaning “confident and optimistic.”  Temperament, from the Latin tempere, “to mix”, was the balance of the humours.  And even temperament was a good balance.  Similarly, if your mix was good at some point you were said to be “in good humour.”

And what of black bile?  It only caused two disorders.  One of them can be guessed from the Greek term for black bile, melan chole: depression.  The other—cancer.

My socks are dry.