'Which Three Books?' - No Qualifications

-the Bible


-the works of Shakespeare


-Paradise Lost

I didn't say I would Include Shakespeare among the books I'd bring.

"It's not about money

It's about sending a Message

Everything Burns!"

http://www.hope-of-israel.org/bihealth.htm

Bubonic Plague -- Scourge of the Middle Ages

During the 14th century bubonic plague-called the "Black Death"-- struck Asia and spread to Russia, Persia, Turkey, North Africa and Europe. Perhaps one third of the world population died in that tragic epidemic.

The plague did not relent. Panic, confusion, and death struck everywhere. The dead were thrown into huge pits, mass graves, and rotting bodies lay about everywhere. The final grim toll of the Black Death was an estimated 60 million lives.

Balavignus was a distinguished Jewish physician who lived during the first part of the 14th century in Europe. He lived at a time when London and Paris were reeking with garbage and filth -- when refuse was simply thrown in the gutter and left to stink. Balavignus was a student of the Old Testament and was familiar with the medical information set forth in it.

When the Black Death broke out in 1346 and swept through Europe, like a hurricane, killing millions, Balavignus saw that the miserable sanitation throughout Europe was a major factor in the quick spread of the disease. He instituted a cleanup movement among the Jews of Strassburg. He had all refuse burned. The rats consequently left the Jewish ghettos and moved into the Gentile sectors of the city. As a result, the Jews' mortality rate from the plague was only five percent of what it was among their non-Jewish neighbors!

This striking fact did not go unnoticed by their superstitious Gentile neighbors. The general population soon saw the difference, and were amazed. But instead of emulating the Jewish hygienic measures, the surrounding people began to suspect the Jews of causing the plague by poisoning their wells! As a result, a general massacre was launched. Balavignus himself, persecuted and tortured, was finally compelled to "confess" that he and others were "responsible" for the frightful disease!

How was the Black Death finally conquered? Declared David Riesman, Professor of the History of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania: "Isolation of the sick and quarantine came into use. These practices not only eliminated the plague as a pandemic menace for the first time in history but also led to general laws against infectious diseases, thereby laying the foundations upon which modern hygiene rests" (Medicine in the Middle Ages, p. 260).

Where did these principles originate? From the Bible!

The Old Testament contains many hygienic injunctions which relate to health. If the world would have obeyed them, its disease toll would have been drastically cut. Until the close of the 17th century, hygienic conditions in cities were generally deplorable. Excrement was often dumped into the streets. Flies, breeding in the filth, and rodents spread and carried disease to millions. During the Industrial Revolution working-class families sometimes lived in squalid, dark, airless tenements, perhaps 30 families sharing one toilet which probably was connected to a cesspool overflowing into the street. Some households simply emptied chamber pots out the window. As a result, streets sometimes looked more like garbage pits than avenues!

In 1842 Edwin Chadwick, an English lawyer, showed that the working-class suffered a higher incidence of disease than upper classes because of miserable living conditions. He reported on the unsatisfactory sanitary conditions and thus fostered a great sanitary movement throughout the Western world.

Self-seeking landlords and slum owners protested and opposed any clean-up measures, but gradually progress was made. By clearing away the filth, the sanitariums removed the breeding grounds of microbes which caused many diseases. As a result, in the second half of the 19th century, epidemics of typhus, typhoid, dysentery and cholera dramatically decreased.

The same lesson had to be learned the hard way in hospitals. During the first part of the 19th century, hospitals seldom had running water. Surgeons wiped their tools on their trousers. There was little regard for sanitation and cleanliness. Infections were rampant, and as many as one third of all pregnant women in hospitals died of puerperal fever, a form of blood poisoning.

However, unknown to scientists and men of medicine, incredibly, the principle of burying excrement and filth -- the basic underlying principle of MODERN SANITATION -- was a basic LAW given in the Scriptures, fourteen centuries before the Messiah. YEHOVAH God told Moses and the children of Israel:

"Thou shalt have a place also without the camp, whither thou shalt go forth abroad: and thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee" (Deut. 23:12-13).

Says Castiglioni, "The regulations in Deuteronomy as to how soldiers should prevent the danger of infection coming from their excrement by covering it with earth constitute a most important document of sanitary legislation" (A History of Medicine, p. 70). Castiglioni declared, "Study of Biblical texts appears to have demonstrated that the ancient Semitic peoples, in agreement with the most modern tenets of epidemiology, attributed more importance to animal transmitters of disease, like the rat and the fly, than to the contagious individual" (Ibid., p. 71).

An indication that the Hebrews knew that the rat was implicated in the spread of plague is found in I Samuel 6:4-5, where an outbreak of plague was associated with "rats that have ravaged the whole land" (Living Bible). But 3,000 years later, when the Bubonic Plague devastated Europe, this knowledge had generally been lost. Some blamed noxious fumes in the air, some blamed the stars, some blamed a conjunction of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, some blamed the Jews, and many blamed YEHOVAH God.

Generally, the world did not wake up to the importance of hygiene and cleanliness until about the end of the 18th century. Yet vital principles of sanitation and cleanliness were expounded long ago by YEHOVAH God to Moses!

Ancient Biblical Sanitation Laws

The Biblical laws of cleanliness, washings, and purification were not all merely "ceremonial" customs or rituals. They protected the camp of Israel from the dangers of contagious diseases and deadly plagues!

States Dr. D. T. Atkinson, "in the Bible greater stress was placed upon prevention of disease than was given to the treatment of bodily ailments, and in this no race of people, before or since, has left us such a wealth of laws relative to hygiene and sanitation as the Hebrews. These important laws, coming down through the ages, are still used to a marked degree in every country in the world sufficiently enlightened to observe them. One has but to read the book of Leviticus carefully and thoughtfully to conclude that the admonitions of Moses contained therein are, in fact, the groundwork of most of today's sanitary laws. As one closes the book, he must, regardless of his spiritual leanings, feel that the wisdom therein expressed regarding the rules to protect health are superior to any which then existed in the world and that to this day they have been little improved upon" (Magic, Myth and Medicine, Atkinson, p. 20).

Another plague which prevailed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Europe was leprosy. England, Sweden, Iceland and Norway showed alarming gains in the numbers of leprosy cases in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. But when the authorities began to institute the quarantine, in the form of segregation of leprosy cases, the plague was again brought under control.

In Norway rigid national quarantine was introduced in 1856 because of the widespread severity of leprosy. "Ninety years later the health authorities were able to report that Norway had only five per cent of the number of lepers that were there before segregation. Similarly favorable reports come to us from Finland and Sweden, where enforced segregation of lepers had also been instituted," writes D. T. Atkinson (Magic, Myth and Medicine, p. 64).

Where did these quarantine laws come from? This same author tells us,

"It is most singular that a description of leprosy, as found in the thirteenth chapter of Leviticus, could have been written so long before our time. it is to be noticed that such an accurate description of this dread malady as it appears in the Biblical narrative is not to be found in the literature of any nation for the next seventeen hundred years" (ibid., p. 25-26).

Speaking of the Biblical laws regarding leprosy, Atkinson states:

"The laws of health laid down in Leviticus are the basis of modern sanitary science. Moses ordered that cases of leprosy should be segregated, that dwellings from which infected Jews had gone should be inspected before again being occupied, and that persons recovering from contagious disease were not to be allowed to go abroad until examined. The modern quarantine harks back to these sanitary regulations of the Old Testament. " (p. 58).

Consider another example. In Vienna in 1846 Ignaz Semmelweis noticed that one patient in eight died of puerperal fever in one ward where they were tended by physicians and medical students who had just performed autopsies on victims who had died. He noticed that in a ward ministered by midwives, however, the death rate was much lower. He ordered all attendants to wash their hands before treating the patients and the following year the death rate dropped to zero. Unfortunately, the medical "authorities" were not impressed, refused to believe there was any direct connection, and Semmelweis was summarily dismissed from his job!

But the really remarkable fact is that Semmelweis, even though he was far ahead of the prevailing medical opinion of his time in the mid-1800's, was still 3,200 years behind in medical knowledge! Almost 1,500 years before the Messiah, YEHOVAH God gave Moses detailed instructions on cleaning one's hands and body after handling the dead! You can read these extensive hygienic laws in Numbers, the 19th chapter, verses 11-22.

Semmelweis made an important discovery, but merely washing the hands once would not be accepted as proper sanitation in any reputable hospital, today. However, the Biblical laws went further. They stated the person who touched a corpse was to be considered "unclean seven days." The third day he was to purify himself and be sprinkled with the water of separation or purification. That is, the water was to be thrown on him (Hebrew zaraq, "to throw" or "sprinkle"). Some authorities say that running water was to be used (verse 17). This duty was to be repeated on the seventh day, and the individual was then to wash his clothes and bathe himself in water -- and then he would be considered "clean."

Running water insured that the water was uncontaminated. The repeated washings insured that there were time intervals which allowed exposure to the sun to kill any bacteria which had not been washed off. The washing of clothing and change of clothes also insured protection from spreading infection.

Were these hygienic laws merely "rituals"? The answer is a profound and resounding "NO!" They were invaluable and wise safeguards from various sources of contamination! Clearly, regardless of the source of his wisdom, Moses was 3,000 years ahead of his time!

Speaking of His divine LAWS, which protect human health and vitality, YEHOVAH God declared to Moses and the children of Israel:

"If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I WILL PUT NONE OF THESE DISEASES UPON THEE, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that HEALETH THEE" [that is, His very name is Yahveh-Ropheka, which is Hebrew for "the Lord your Healer" -- that is one of His very names!] (Exodus 15:26).

Unfortunately, in our modern world nations are beginning to lose sight of the importance of sanitation and hygiene. Our modem cities are becoming increasingly polluted, filthy and dirty. Our air is becoming unfit to breathe because of pollutants; water is becoming fouled and contaminated with industrial chemicals and urban wastes. Some comic once joked that man is standing knee deep in garbage on earth while he hurls rockets at the moon!

Could the continuing decrease of sanitation, and the growing pollution and filth around us, be contributing factors in the increase in modem degenerative and contagious diseases?

I intend to touch on all of them, I have a very massive mythology I'm building.

I'm also making Nero a Vampire, but you've probably already deduced that from other comments I've made.

"Lois-I know who your HuSband is! Your Next!!"

They are relatively chronological thou.

With the Koran we have no idea where to actually even start.

No I didn't say he wouldn't have a Kornai said he wouldn't have a history book on the origins of the Eloi and Morlocks.

"SLaughter is the best medicine"