I love medieval history. Disease was one of the greatest course changers in the history of the world. According to historians when certain diseases hit parts of the world, history is changed.
One of the interesting parts of the First World War was the arrival of what was called the Spanish Flu. That killed more American soldiers than the Germans. By far. And in fact a lot of people believe the flu ripped through the trenches on both sides. Because as I’m sure some of you know, the Germans believed they were ahead in the war before the flu struck.
When the plagues befell Europe in the middle of the 14th century they came in waves. Black Death and Red Death.
Red Death was smallpox and Black Death was bubonic plague.
If you read the stories of Columbus and the sailors of the 15th century, when picking out crews they looked for pock marks on the faces of recruits knowing that meant they had survived the plague and could go on the ship.
Sea captains were under strict orders never to come into port when they knew they had plague on board and would hoist a yellow flag telling people on shore that they had plague on the ship.
Also since I’m a cat lover, medieval Christians during the heights of plague believed it was brought on by Satan and of course Satan’s handmaidens, witches. And what rode on the tails of those brooms and lived with witches? You got it, cats.
What did cats kill? Cats killed rats. What rode on rats? Fleas. What did fleas carry? The plague. Are you starting to get the picture?
When I was a little fellow growing up in Pittsburgh I got scarlet fever. I have dim memories of it and remind everyone this was before penicillin was available to the average working class person. Today we call it strep but it can become scarlet fever and of course affects almost no one because it can be stopped in its tracks by penicillin.
The old man’s first floor apartment was quarantined by Allegheny County. No one was allowed into the house and I think only my dad would go out to work. One of the stories that was told to me about my mother is the Allegheny County health officials wanted to put me in a ward someplace in a Pittsburgh hospital. A friend of my mother’s said to her, “If they put that boy in that ward he’ll never come off it.” Things were so bad I may have died.
So after stuff like that, being sick, or as we say under the weather, doesn’t seem to be much of a big deal.
I also remember when the announcement came that Jonas Salk had cured polio. Now people won’t believe this but I remember the church bells ringing. I remember people hugging in the street because polio had been put to bed.
When I was in the fifth grade a kid up the street from us got polio. The panic that ran through the neighborhood was unbelievable. I make jokes today on myself that I can’t swim and a couple of reasons are that people believed you could get polio from swimming pools and that the river, which was close to the old man’s house was the wellspring for polio.
My dad never had a quarter for us to go swimming at a public pool and of course we were never allowed by the river. Because of polio I can’t swim.
In the last three or four months everybody I know is sick. In fact the publisher of this paper is also sick. I’ve been sick. And other people are talking about how everyone they know is sick.
You know we’re all going to get over this just as soon as this weather breaks (my mom used to say that).
But one of the things I think we can look at with pride is all the stuff that used to kill us, all the stuff that used to threaten us pretty much has been put to bed.
So now what do we have? We have obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart attacks, diabetes, and all kinds of cancers.
But the little guys, like my grandson Liam and Chuck and Julie’s son Rev, will never have to worry like we did when we were little kids or some medieval Englishman about what was waiting for him in the shadows.
We do have good food. We do have clean water and the kinds of things that threatened my childhood will never threaten my grandson’s.
Be thankful. And that guy sitting next to you at work? Tell him to cover his mouth.
— Peter
P.S.: I’ve been sick since Thanksgiving.