No Other Solution

NextTurn Replies.

First of all, I am not suggesting that prayer caused the plague in the first place. Nor do I believe prayer increased the painful symptoms of the disease. And I do feel in many circumstance prayer may relieved an individuals suffering in terms of a placebo effect.

I do believe that prayer prolonged the spread of the disease by hampering logical solutions that could have stopped/prevented the spread of it. Prayer did this by giving people an apparent solution to the problem, thus millions upon millions of minds were closed to the investigation of a solution because – in their minds- the best solution was already available. In other words, why look for a NEW solution when almost everyone believed faith, repentance and prayer was the best or the only solution to the problem.

It is very apparent that the majority of people in Europe thought that plague was caused by a vengeful God or the devil, and/or the ONLY solution was through God. One my favorite cartoons depicts, a devote Catholic, praying to God to save her family from the plague as she bats away a rat lurking by. This mindset is shown by the actions of lawmakers and the Church as they introduced laws and policies that cracked down on immoral behavior as a solution to the plague. There were also many accounts of placing blame on people using them as scapegoats.

What would REALLY scare me is if prayer actually did cure some people. If someone was miraculously healed and told others, then the misconception of how to stop the disease would be re-enforced, thus making the possibility of finding a REAL and comprehensive solution much less likely. In fact, since the morality rate was not 100% a few people that became sick did get better and since everyone prayed, they most likely cited prayer, repentance or faith as what saved them.
(The underlying solution to this disease was the controlling the rodent population and the proper disposing of dead bodies, human feces and other waste products as so to not attract the carriers of the disease and conditions that allowed the disease to flourish. The Catholic mistrust of cats -as an association to witchcraft- also contributed to the spread of the plague.)


To recap my argument in logical steps:
1. 99% of people medieval Europe believed in a God.
2. A majority of those people thought the best/only solution was through God. (prayer etc.)
3. This closed off millions upon millions of minds from the actual causes of the plague and the appropriate actions needed to stop the spread of the disease.
(Rodent control & city cleanliness; I wouldn’t expect people to understand germ theory during that time)
4. Because the underlining causes were not discovered the plague was allow to spread all across Europe and to reach epidemic proportions.
5. This is re-affirmed the by large number of subsequent outbreaks in Europe during later centuries that were not as frequent in other places of the world that were equally effected by the plague during the 14th century.
(During this time people started to understand how the disease spread as shown by doctor’s new apparel as depicted in this picture: )

All the information -concerning the plague and the human reaction to it- I presented here I consider common knowledge, thus I have not posted any references. If you do not consider this common knowledge I can post references if you want me to.


My Answer.

Ok, Next Turn
1. An exaggeration but ok, Christianity was the dominant religion.

2. Do you have any evidence at all for this assertion? Really this just looks like you projecting your ignorance of Christian doctrine. People are not taught to pray and do nothing. All through the Bible people pray and prepare not pray or prepare.

Passively praying does not look like what the people of Europe were doing at all. They were trying everything they could think of from filling rooms with smoke, quarantining people, bleeding people even rubbing birds on their bubos, looking for anything that might help.

There was a propagation of cures of all types which is very inconsistent with your idea that people were unwilling to experiment for religious reasons.

3. Do you have any evidence of this?

Anyway the science of the time was not pointing in this direction. Instead, secular people were focused on issues like ’vapors’ that needed to be combated by smoke and by eating certain foods at certain times or draining off bad fluids from the blood.

None of which would have helped but were based on the very imperialist teachings of Galen who maintained that sickness came from a lack of balance not from an attack on the body as we now know.

One of your underlining causes is wrong (In the Wake of the Plague, Norman Cantor p17) the bodies had very low contagion but the medieval people were deathly afraid of the bodies (Cantor p17).

One of your other causes, filth was known to the people at that time (English Life and Law in the Time of the Black Death, Mark Senn). Also the connection between filth and disease was a religious one in the medieval mind going back to Judeo-Christian conception of sin as filth.

The only effective practice of the time was also a religious one. Quarantine was enforced after the first year (Cantor 25) and is a technique that while not found in the secular Greek writings of Galen ( trusted at the time) could be found in the Bible .

So it was not surprising that the Church was the one leading the way in making doors of households tainted with the plague.

4. The plague certainly did spread and kill dramatically.

5. Your picture of the doctor wearing gloves and a mask. You already know that this attire would not have been helpful since the disease was not mostly airborne.

The real reason the plague subsided is because the population had grown resident the bacteria. The same methods that failed with the bubonic plague were used again (and failed again) for the smallpox and cholera epidemics. (Senn).

I need to see some evidence for your assertions. I still don’t have any reason to believe that religion caused people to suffer more during the black plague or in any way inhibited people’s ability to deal with the epidemic.