Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

Disease, death and killing 205
fearsome and that there were few effective remedies available. Physicians had
little knowledge of physiology and none of today’s sophisticated instruments
to guide them. It is only relatively recently that the mystery surrounding the
aetiology of disease has been lifted. In the past, the dearth of knowledge
concerning bodily organs, their processes and their pathological changes
produced exotic medical doctrines built upon imagination and superstition.
To be fair, in their own context these doctrines did not appear as absurd as
they do from today’s perspective; in many cases, simple faith in the ritual may
well have been enough to effect a cure. Nonetheless, disease was generally
thought of as something mysterious and supernatural. Typically, explanations
for sickness connected the complaint with the workings of malevolent spirits
or with divine punishment for sins committed. Epidemics were believed to be
retribution for the indiscretions of entire communities. As often as not, cures
took the form of appeals for clemency to those higher powers believed
responsible, as people resorted to prayers, incantations, sacrifices and sorcery.
Even post-Renaissance, therapeutics in Europe was still showing a curious
mixture of Christian theology and the superstitions of pagan antiquity.
A common term for an illness or malady was still evil; for example, the foul
evil ‘pox’, the falling evil ‘epilepsy’, king’s evil ‘scrofula’ (a sickness that was
thought to be curable by the touch of a king, because a king was invested with
God’s power on earth).
In the past, the names of many maladies were favourable appellations
(some almost reverential), obviously aimed at placating the unseen powers
that caused them. The label St Vitus’ Dance (chorea), for example, dates back
to the medieval period and what became known as the ‘cult of saints’. During
that time, it was a common practice to invoke the saints and, strange to our
eyes, a variety of diseases were called by their names, typically the most
horrific. 2 St Vitus’ Dance was originally an epidemic of considerable proportion.
Known also as the dancing mania, it was a kind of mass hysteria that
swept through medieval Europe (very different from the symptoms of today’s
St Vitus’ Dance). Thousands of people, believed to be possessed by demons,
took to the streets, leaping about in mad frenzy for hours, sometimes for days,
until they dropped foaming at the mouth. The description St. Vitus’ Dance
suggests a joyous romp, and conveys nothing of the suffering that attended
this particular psychotic disorder. St Antonius’ Fire (erysipelas) referred to
another epidemic that raged successively throughout the Middle Ages, killing
and deforming on a huge scale. So great was the terror surrounding the
plague, that it masqueraded under a number of different saints’ names;
St Adrian, St Christopher, St Valentine, St Giles and St Roch were some of
the many saints invoked to protect against the disease. St Christopher, when
he wasn’t called on for plague, also looked after epileptics. St Blaise took
care of throat problems, St Lawrence backaches, St Apollonia teeth, and