The world of Tzu Chi June 2020 (Vol.123)

06 2020 • 06 eature S ince young, we have been taught to wash our hands before meals, flush the toilet after use, brush our teeth twice a day and bathe daily, among other hygiene habits. However, the concept of personal hygiene was unfathomable in mid-century Europe. Back then, the Europeans had yet to acquaint themselves with the practice of bathing. Rather, the French invented perfume to mask any foul body odour. Furthermore, the houses of ancient Europe were not equipped with toilets as sewerage systems were not installed. Hence, people defecated into wooden buckets and disposed of the manure onto the streets – an act that was only allowed at night-time, as decreed by the government. Those intending to dispose of their waste would holler three times in advance to alert passersby, although the gesture of issuing a “warning” to others was not mandated by law. The citizens of medieval Europe lived with an archaic concept of sanitation, or rather, the lack thereof. In a time when antibiotics and vaccines had yet to be developed, the lack of awareness of personal hygiene provided fertile breeding ground for bacteria and viruses to multiply. From 1348 to 1352, the Black Death outbreak swept across Europe. Those infected with the disease displayed symptoms of persistent high fever, headaches and nausea, while pus-filled tumours that oozed blood festered on blackened skin. The plague caused widespread malaise and death, as 14th-century Viral diseases throughout human history Sources: Wikipedia, Ancient History Encyclopedia Our knowledge of novel viruses leaves much to be desired, as evident in our apprehensive, tentative response to the Covid-19 pandemic. This contagion of unprecedented scale is perhaps the most alarming clarion call of the 21st century to reassess our attitude towards nature. chronicler Agnolo di Tura recounted: “… great pits were dug and piled deep with the multitude of dead. And they died by the hundreds, both day and night, and all were thrown in those ditches and covered with earth. And as soon as those ditches were filled, more were dug … so many died that all believed it was the end of the world.” The impact of the pandemic was devastating, resulting in the downfall of the ancient city of Athens in Greece. In the late 5th century BC, the Peloponnesian War was fought between the city-states of Athens and Sparta in a quest to conquer the classical Greek empire. As the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta invaded Athens in 430 BC, the troops were faced with a new crop of graves surrounding the city – an outcome of the deadly epidemic raging across the land. The Spartan king was startled and ordered his troops to disperse. No one dared to cross the city’s borders since then. Athens was at the mercy of not the enemy troops, but the highly-infectious contagion threatening to wipe out the city. Victims of the plague suffered from a litany of distressing symptoms, beginning with a high fever and a sore throat, followed by convulsions and diarrhoea, before developing blisters and sores that ravaged their limbs and extremities. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides penned a detailed account of the pandemic and the state of the nation, History of the PeloponnesianWar, in which he noted: “… there was no previous