Compared with the way things used to be, we have it so very soft
today. It’s easy to take our modern conveniences for granted. We
can fill our days with leisure, bustle around in comfy autos,
work only 40 of the 168 hours in a week, chat with therapists,
read philosophy, shop for unnecessary stuff to clog our closets
and garages, climate control our dwellings and complain about
the softness of our mattresses. In the year 1000, even when
agriculture had been around for some 10,000 years, life was
entirely different. In Anglo-Saxon society, a precursor to the
modern West, the possibility of famine was ever-present and
memories of the last one made dread and fear a part of everyday
life. Looming natural disasters were constant specters.
Domiciles were not the neat and clean hygienic environs we
experience today. They did not smell of disinfectant or exhaust
from engines wafting in the windows, but the exhaust from every
manner of farm creature and humans always hung in the air.
Manure was everywhere with each one having its characteristic
bouquet of fragrance. The human nose in the year 1000 could
certainly not be so prissy as ours today.
Latrines were located at or near the back door and moss was
toilet paper. Flies filled the dank and earthen floor homes
where there were few if any hard surfaced utensils and there was
no understanding of disease vectors or antiseptic. If you
dropped food on the filthy floor, you picked it up and ate it
with relish. Five baths a year for monks was thought to be
fanaticism by Saxon standards of personal hygiene.
In time of famine, their law code permitted fathers to sell
their sons aged seven or above into slavery. Infanticide was not
a crime. Communities of 40 or 50 starving emaciated people would
join hands at the edge of a cliff and jump. Some chronicles
report that “men ate each other.” They would comb the forests
for beechnuts overlooked by the wild pigs and would grind
acorns, beans, peas and tree bark into a flour to bake as bread.
Hedgerows were scoured for paltry herbs, roots, nettles and
grasses. “What makes bitter things sweet?” asked a Yorkshire
schoolmaster. “Hunger.”
A “crazy bread” of ground poppies, hemp and darnel gave our poor
starving ancestors some relief with visions of paradise. Molds
that laced the rye that was aging contained a variety of
mycotoxins (and lysergic acid [LSD], the psychedelic drug of the
“60s) that could not only make people appear mad but would
severely weaken the immune system, permitting disease to run
rampant. (Note that the cause of the great plagues and epidemics
was not the disease agent, but the fragile or non-existent
immune system of the starving and poisoned host.)
The church would help allay the pain by harnessing hunger to
spiritual purposes. Lent made virtue of necessity, coming as it
did in the final months of winter when barns and larders were
growing empty. Feast and famine were linked to spiritual
purification and gave meaning to hardship as well as hope for
better times.
July was particularly tough since the spring crops had not
matured and the barns were empty from the previous year’s
harvest. Starving was common in the balmiest month of the year
when so much toil in the fields was necessary. Every single hour
of the August harvest month was filled with urgency, since
everyone knew from the pains of July what was in store for them
next year if they did not fill their larders now. Work was not a
right, a place to lobby for benefits and ease. It was a life and
death struggle. The contrast between then and now is
astonishing. They were on the verge of starvation; we are
fighting an epidemic of obesity. They might have to subsist for
months on potatoes or stale bread; we have a glut of food
options at our instant disposal. They had shortened life spans
and were highly vulnerable to injury and disease. We live longer
but suffer cruel lingering degenerative conditions. It is clear
from a realistic view of times gone by that it was not the
advent of modern medicine that brought relief, it was, as I
mentioned in a previous article on SARS, it was the plumber
bringing public utilities and with that the possibility of
hygiene and the trucker distributing food supplies that brought
us our present long lives. For them it was a daily struggle for
survival. Necessity and muscle ruled the day. It was the
physical stress of enduring cold, harnessing 8 oxen to a plow to
break new soil, hand harvesting and making their own way every
moment of the day. It was the true helplessness and
victimization (unlike modern day contrived social “victims”
clamoring for rights and handouts) from floods, droughts, winds
and rain that could wipe out their only hope to avoid starvation
in the coming year. For us it is a surfeit of choices requiring
intellectual decisions - decisions that make the difference
between whether we experience full health or its slow insidious
ruination by mindlessly partaking of every offering that
promises yet more ease and flavor just because it is there.
