Plague and Pestilence in Literature and Art
Sir Raymond Henry Payne Crawfurd
9781465656988
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The scattered records of literature afford a valuable, but neglected, contribution to the study of epidemic pestilence. They show us pestilence as an affair of the mind, as medical literature has shown it as an affair of the body. They teach us too the humiliating lesson that, in spite of the progress of civilization, in spite of the apparent growth of humanity, in spite of the development and dissemination of scientific knowledge, human nature has again and again reverted to the primitive instincts of savagery in face of the crushing calamity of epidemic pestilence. The superficial student of psychology may find it difficult to believe that, so late as 1630 in Milan, so late as 1656 in Naples, so late as 1771 in Moscow, the blood-lust of a maddened populace sought and found a sedative in an orgy of human sacrifice. But so it was. And in this homing instinct of the human mind is to be found the clue to much in the records of literature and art that else is wholly meaningless. It is a grim chapter of history that lies before us, but maybe we shall find here and there some spiritual Bethel reared out of the hard stones on which suffering humanity has lain its weary head. The mind of primitive man conceives no power over nature higher than his own: so is his attitude conditioned to disease. He sees in disease only some evil magic, exercised by man on man. The Australian native believes that the assailant transmits disease by pointing some object at his victim, who in turn looks to magic to free him from the disease. In the New Hebrides the idea still persists that the aggressor shoots some charmed material at the victim by means of bow and arrow. Medicine has not yet emerged from magic. The human mind, as it passes to higher stages of enlightenment, does not wholly discard its primitive beliefs: of this we find abundant testimony in early records of pestilence. In Pharaoh’s plagues mark the importance of the manual acts, the stretching out of the rod, the smiting of the dust, the sprinkling of ashes. Again, when the Philistines of Ashdod ask for deliverance from plague, the diviners enjoin them to make images of their emerods, or swellings. This is crude magic—imitative magic—the essence of which is that any effect may be produced by imitating it. It is the spirit in which a savage sprinkles water when he wishes rain to fall. As his own impotence is borne in on man, he comes to look beyond himself alike for the cause and cure of his disease; but human agency still bounds his whole horizon. He looks to those likest himself in nature, the imperishable spirits of his own departed dead. Endued with bodily form, their ghosts need offerings of food and drink, and humble homage of prayer. Neglect of these is recompensed by the sending of sickness and death. This cult prevailed in the religion of young Rome and in the Greek worship of beings of the underworld (χθόνιοι), and may be found to-day in Oceania. Such a deified spirit of the dead might exert his influence in dreams to those who slept over his abode. Such is the germ of the incubation ritual of the demigod Asclepius, who revealed remedies for sickness, and was invoked for deliverance from pestilence. Strabo says that Tricca in Thessaly was the oldest sanctuary of Asclepius, who was the deified ancestor of the Phlegyae and Minyae, the ruling family of Tricca.
