Friday, October 28, 2005

Avian Flu and St. Hubert

If you live in the US or NL, it is unlikely that your government has reserved a Tamiflu shot for you. You’ll need to find your own solution in case of pandemic. What I always tell my students is that one of the reasons to study history is that it often provides models for problem solving that can still be applied today. So let me recommend to you an early sixteenth-century solution to animal-borne disease.


A few years ago in the rare book room at the library in Ghent, I photographed this print, which only appears to have survived in one copy. The print is dated at the bottom “xv c . xvj” (ie, 1516) and has an image of St. Hubert at the top. St. Hubert was a hunter who was out one day pursuing the deer when he had an epiphany: the deer upon which he was about to release his dogs suddenly sprouted a crucifix from its antlers. This is the moment we see in the image. St. Hubert called the dogs, dropped his weapon, knelt before the deer, and promised to become a vegetarian.

Hubert was thought to hold sway over dogs (because he was able to call off them off?); although they are curiously not represented in this print, they appear in most fifteenth-century depictions of the saint. He therefore became associated with rabies, which medieval people realized were transmitted by dog bites. A shrine in his honor was built in the Ardennes, and people who had the “dog bite disease” would visit Hubert’s relics. There they might also buy a print, such as this one.

The text at the bottom describes what to do if you contract rabies. I won’t transcribe/translate the whole thing for you. It says that someone with the disease should go to the Hubert altar to be “cut,” meaning that he should have his forehead incised and a piece of the relic inserted into the wound. He should sleep for 9 days on fresh, clean sheets, drink white or red wine cut down with water, and eat white or brown bread, and the meat from a pig or a chicken that’s more than a year old, and hard-boiled eggs. He should keep his head upright for 9 days and not comb his hair (presumably so the relic stays in place). Most importantly, he should honor St. Hubert.

Let me know if it works.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Acrostics for Erie

You'll notice that we've drifted from the fifteenth century. Be reassured that the last word on late medieval hospitals has not yet appeared on these pages. But for now, a brief step into the twenty-first.

I heard John Hegley, my favorite poet, performing in London the other day. Not only is he funny to watch and listen to, but he's good for my development of understatment, a necessary skill for living in the UK. During one of his previous shows, which I attended with my mother in Milton Keenes, he inspired these acrostics, which my fabulously talented mother wrote about her home town, Erie, Pennsylvania:

Elasticized raingear inflates egos.
Expect rain in eternity.
Excavate radiant iridescent emeralds.
Eliminate racial intolerance everywhere.
Exude radiance; infuse energy.
Elvis remains icon extraordinaire.
Extremist religion insults existence.
Eat raisins if expecting.
Eggs rationed in eighths.
Extra rations induce energy.
External reality internalizes everything.
Excessive ripening incubates excretion.
Eradicate repulsive industrial epicenters.
Erase reprehensible inbound e-mails.
Exit research institutions exhumed.
Erotic ritual involves elves.
Excitable rotund implants explode.
Eggy recipes inspire epicures.
Exhibitionist removes incriminating evidence.
Evil restaurateur invents escargot.