Having just seen the Hobbit, my mind went into its usual conflicts with the story. n We see the dwarfs and Hobbit walking endlessly for many days in areas where food, and sometimes water, looked to be very scarce. The carried a backpack but it die not seem to contain anything useful. Nothing was shown about their survival. No food was caught, no rations apportioned, but they maintained exhaustive energy, As I have often mentioned, I like 'feel-good; movies and books. But sometimes even the ones which most people would see as 'feel good' with happy endings really don't say anything about the ever-after. Books about warriors in the 100th and 12th centuries show nothing about hygiene, oral habits, bathing, whether they had intestinal diseases, or whether anyone ever died of compacted constipation. I'm sure that they would have been unable to diagnose most of the ailments they had, Death was constant through childbirth, infection, STDs, and so much we think we have avoided by modern medicine today,
A friend sent me an excellent article on diagnosing illness centuries ago through writings available with detail. It appeared in the Wall Street Journal and is a fascinating read Speculations on famous people made by a talented physician make a new perspective out of some of the greats whose published works still keep us reading them.
No comments:
Post a Comment