Brandy and brutality, pain and disease, dirt and bacteria, absense of what we take for granted now in science and technology--characterized medicine in this period. My consciousness of this reality became heightened when I watched the TV series Medical Mavericks(BBC>ABC TV, 31 March 2008, 7/4/08, 14/4/08 and 21/4/08). I watched the transformation of medical knowledge in modern history by scientists who developed anaesthetics like ether and chloroform to put an end to pain in surgery. Pain free surgery became possible because some of these men became self-experimenters, human guinea-pigs to test their theories. Vaccines were also developed to cure rabies, typhoid, syphilis, yellow fever and polio—diseases which had killed millions. I was reminded in the process, in my reflections on the content of this stimulating and inspiring television series, of a quotation from the book of Revelation, a quotation that those who lived in the period 1150 to 1550, would have seen as being fulfilled if the discoveries of modern times had occurred back then.
The quotation went like this, in part: “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying.”(21:4) These tears and this pain may have more to do with the end of spiritual death and that death’s attendant sorrow and pain by those who live by a new spiritual Law, who find inner meaning in new religious symbols thus replacing old and false theology and dead outward formalisms.-Ron Price with thanks to Robert Riggs, The Apocalypse Unsealed, Philosophical Library, NY, 1981, p. 252.
Breakthrough after breakthrough,
discovery after discovery, still it
was a long, sinuous and complex
story of drama and human tragedy,
understanding and knowledge
beginning, arguably, in that year,
mirabile dictu,1 1844 in dentists’
offices in Tasmania and Rhode
Island as millions of tears, much
pain and sorrow ended at long last.
But new pains and sorrows, tempests
and violence came into our world---
more than we had ever seen. It was,
in part, this, then, that was wiped away
from our eyes. Crying and a morbid
melancholy from some inward and
original pollution, some plague and
affliction, perhaps this was on the way
out as all things were being made new;
as some Alpha and Omega, some pure
water, some river as clear as crystal,
some fruit for the transformation of
tribulations into instruments of humanity’s
redemption...for sweet, as the bard once said,
are the uses of adversity, which, like the toad,
ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel
in his head; and this our life, exempt from human
haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running
brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.2
1 Latin expression meaning marvellous to relate, incredible, wondrous
2 William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II, Scene I.
Ron Price
11 July 2008
updated for FireStryker
Living History Forum
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married for 42 years, a teacher for 35 and a Baha'i for 50.
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posted 07-12-2008 04:23 AM
