KARL KEATING'S E-LETTER
TOPICS:
NO MORE COMPLAINTS ABOUT MY MEDICAL CARE!
THE RELIGIOUS ANGLE FOR TODAY
CIRCUMAMBULATING LONDON
Dear Friend of Catholic Answers:
There isn't much about religion in what follows, but there is some. In
these weekly E-Letters I have the liberty of writing whatever is on my
mind, and today my thoughts are on the London of the eighteenth century.
"SHOCKED, SHOCKED I SAY!"
Maybe Claude Rains would not have been shocked (the quotation, of
course, was his in "Casablanca"), but I was--well, not shocked but
disturbed. I am reading Liza Picard's "Dr. Johnson's London," a look at
life there between 1740 and 1760. I just finished the chapter on health,
medicine, and hygiene and was made grateful that I live today and not
then.
In the mid-eighteenth century London was the most populous city in
Europe and probably the most advanced technologically and industrially,
but it was not a place one would want to fall ill in.
There were no true remedies against any diseases, except for smallpox,
for which inoculations recently had begun. If you came down with any of
the "childhood diseases"--mumps, chicken pox, scarlet fever, and so
on--you toughed it out or simply died. Half of all children died before
their teen years, which is why the average life expectancy was as low as
36, about half of ours today.
The most common medical treatment was bloodletting, on the theory that
whatever ailed you was in your blood, so by getting rid of some blood
you got rid of some of the disease. Medicines were of the patent
medicine variety, which meant they were entirely worthless.
In fact, there were no true medicines at all, nothing that actually
could cure a disease and nothing that would do much for symptoms. Not a
single item you can buy over the counter in a drug store existed at the
time. (Aspirin? It would come along far in the future.)
A particularly popular treatment--used not just in serious cases, such
as cancer, but for more minor illnesses--was the drinking of mercury
mixed with water. Supposedly the mercury latched on to undesirable
things in your digestive system and flushed them out. The drawback was
that mercury is highly poisonous. Patients were not to imbibe so much
that their tongues and saliva turned solid black--that was considered
overdoing it. (I should think so!)
Hygiene? Nowadays, British friends tell me, it still is not customary
for the English to shower daily. A few times a week is all that is
expected, I am told. Well, that's a big step up from 250 years ago, when
once a month was considered more than sufficient. You can imagine how
infrequently hands were washed and what that meant in terms of
sanitation in a metropolis where offal was tossed into the yard, there
being no true sewer system.
Almost nothing was done for the teeth, I learned. Toothbrushes existed,
but they were so harsh that they tended to wear away the enamel rapidly,
so most people skipped cleaning their teeth entirely. One writer
recommended brushing at least once a month because otherwise one's mouth
would become so foul that no one could stand nearby.
Samuel Johnson famously remarked that "when a man is tired of London, he
is tired of life." I took that to mean that, as would be said of Kansas
City many years later, "everything is up to date in London." Maybe so,
but what a life!
It seems to be literally true that even the poorest people in today's
world, with the possible exception of natives hidden in the upper
reaches of the Amazon, have better medical care than did the upper
classes in Johnson's London--and they arguably have better sanitation
too.
After all, even indigenous tribes in faraway places on occasion have
foreign medical teams visit them, and even the poorest villages in, say,
Mexico, have nearby some sort of clinic, no matter how basic, and those
clinics have aspirin and maybe even penicillin.
Nowadays most folks, even the ignorant and poor, understand that many
diseases can be contained, if not eradicated, by such simple expedients
as washing one's hands after a trip to the lavatory. This knowledge was
not around in 1750, so London periodically was swept with waves of
communicable disease.
OKAY, HERE WE COME TO THE RELIGIOUS PART...
There are lots of things wrong in today's Church and in our own lives
and in our own country. Sometimes we fall into nostalgic reveries and
wish we could be transported back to a happier time. If we have literary
pretensions, we might think the Age of Johnson to be a possibility, but
that would mean important trade-offs. Thanks, but don't beam me up,
Scotty. I think I'll stay here.
Bishop Sheen once remarked that ours is an exciting time to live in
because, given the troubles around us, we have so many opportunities to
pitch in and do something for the Church and for our neighbors. Had we
lived in quieter times, he said, we likely would sit on our duffs and
"let Father do it."
The good bishop had a point. There are real and growing problems today
(the Supreme Court recently added some to the list), but there are
chances for us to "work out our salvation in fear and trembling."
I think it would be harder for most of us to do that if we commonly
found ourselves prostrate from what today is considered a minor or
treatable illness but in Johnson's time might have been a possible death
sentence. Just as I find it almost impossible to pray when sick, so I
find it almost impossible to do anything constructive, for myself or for
others, if I'm feeling lousy.
So, I'm grateful for being put in this time rather than in some
other--not that this is the best of all possible worlds. It isn't. But
in some ways, such as the medicinal, it is better than prior eras have
been. If I were a saint, I might not find illness as disabling as in
fact I find it; perhaps saints are able to elevate themselves above
bodily complaints and still do what needs to be done. I'm not there
yet--and I don't know whether I ever will be.
WALKING AROUND LONDON
By the way, I had been under the impression--false, it turns out--that
London was a vast, spread-out metropolis even in Johnson's time. I was
surprised to learn from "Dr. Johnson's London" how small the city was in
the eighteenth century: only five miles long by at most two-and-a-half
miles wide, so it had a perimeter of about fourteen miles.
(This meant a population density approaching 50,000 per square mile,
compared to today's density of 22,000 per square mile for inner London.
Talk about the "teeming masses"! At least it was easy to get away from
the crowds: Just walk three miles in any direction from the city center
and you'd find yourself in the farmlands.)
The "Gentleman's Magazine" once made a fuss about two men who
circumambulated London in seven hours. Such a feat! It amuses me that
the editors thought it was worthy of serious note. Fourteen miles in
seven hours is two miles per hour, a normal walking pace. Did
eighteenth-century Londoners not use their feet much?
Maybe they didn't. Maybe they were smart enough to stay indoors, where
they were less likely to catch an infection.
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