Landscapes of Fear

8. Fear of Disease

8. Fear of Disease Signs of life are all around us, but so, if we choose to look, are signs of decay and disease: moldering leaves and rotting tree trunks; wounded,sick, dead, and dying animals. Yet, despite the common claim that human beings are a part of nature and therefore must adapt or submit toits rules, nowherein the world do people accept sickness and death as perfectly natural and thus in no need of special notice or explanation. Night follows day, winter follows summer. People take these great rhythmsof nature as given,but not the alternations of sickness and health, not death as the inevitable goal of life. We are biased in favor of life, particularly as it is manifested in the health ofour ownbody. The body'sintegrity is the foundation for our sense of order and wholeness. Whenwe sicken, so it seems does the world.Whenwe close our eyes and die, the world too enters oblivion. The body is our most intimate cosmos, a system whose harmony is felt rather than merely perceived with the mind. Threaten the body, and our whole being revolts.Why does the pain persist? Why do I feel nausea? Before medical science had achieved a degree of precision, the answer to such questions was seldom confined to specificmaterial causes. Only the stomach hurts; yet to explain why it hurts might require the healer to look for perturbations in human society, in the world of spirits, and among the stars. Weshall see that fear of disease is closely linked to fear of many other phenomena, including defects in the self, tainted or bewitched objects, evil persons, demonic spirits, and a malfunctioning cosmos. Sickness forcefully directs a people's attention to the world's hostility. Whatcan be done? Humanbeings have sought answers in nature, studying its properties and processes in the hope of Landscapes of Fear 88 finding cures. Withthe exception ofa few primitive groups,such as the Tasaday, most human societies have acquired some knowledge of the medicinal virtues of natural substances. They also often show a profound understanding of how a person's physical well-being is affected by his or her mental state. A complex civilization such as the Chinese boasts a sophisticated medical tradition of its own,whoselore and pragmatic discoveries complement and supplement those of Western science. An inspiring story can thus be told of this line of human endeavor . But before the rise of modern society and hygiene, the successes in combatting disease were so limited in scope and available to so few sufferers that they did little to assuage a people's general sense of helplessness. The origin and cure of many diseases were simply unknown. Why was one person struck down with swollen veins while another remained sound of body? Epidemics appeared as sudden and incomprehensible scourges over which people had little control. What evil air could make the population of an entire village burn with fever? Had some taboo been broken? Werethe gods angry? What did a comet or an unusual conjunction of stars forebode? It is clear that as we study the fear ofsickness in variouscultures, we shall also be made aware of a far greater range of anxieties that plague humankind. Because the etiology of a disease is often complex,it shouldnot be surprising that nonliterate peoples in different parts of the world seldom agree on the origin of any particular form of illness . Nevertheless, primitive views tend to fall under twobroad categories. Under one, the cause is perceived as external: a person suffers because he or she is invaded by an external agent— a malefic object or spirit—in the environment. Under the other, the source of illness is internal: a person becomes sick because he or she has broken a taboo and offended the gods. To remain healthy and whole an individual must guard against external threats, and in some cultures must also be sure that he or she is not knowingly or unknowingly the actual source of disharmony .1 Harmful intrusions, in primitive thought, are of three types. One is the alien object. Disease is attributed to the presence in the body of a bit of bone, a hair, a pebble, a splinter of wood, or even small animals—worms and insects, for example. These things, which obviously do not belong in the body, inducesickness . Yet not all people holding such a concept insist that the bone or splinter of wood is.itself pathogenic;rather, they see the object as containing...