Dark Ages??� view of illness was pretty bright - LiveScience

Dark Ages??� view of ailments was pretty bright

Folks had progressive view of ills because sickness was common, meditate says
By Heather WhippsSpecial to LiveScience

The Dark Ages had a few more proverbial lightbulbs on than once thought, at least when it came to issues of the body.

People living in Europe during early Medieval times (400??"1200 A.D.) actually had a progressive view of illness because sickness was so common and out in the open, according to the research presented at a recent historical conference.

Instead of being isolated or shunned, the sick were integrated into society and taken care of by the community, the evidence suggests.

"The Dark Ages weren't so dark," said University of Nottingham historian Christina Lee, co-organizer of the second conference on Disease, Disability and Medicine in Early Medieval Europe. "The question we should be asking is whether illness was actually seen as a problem. What was classified as a disability? What was an impairment? The answer can't be generalized."

The views presented challenge traditional views of Dark Age attitudes being unenlightened and guided by the unscientific doctrines of the church.

'A community affair'
Pharmacomedical aid of the sick in the Dark Ages is poorly understood today because none of it was governed by law or written down, Lee said, but assuming that it was backwards and steeped in superstition would be a mistake.

Being sick was much more common back then, for one thing, so group accepted and dealt with ill group on a daily basis, she said.

"Parents, neighbors and friends all tried to get each otherness to a place of healing," Lee told LiveScience. "It was a community affair."

Lepers, usually depicted in film as isolated and ostracized, were often given splendid burials, she noted. Elaborate burials for adults with Down syndrome have also been found, indicating that they were taken care of past their life expectancy, Lee said.

In Lee's view, expecting to encounter serious sickness during your lifetime ??" and just dealing with as it came ??" was a common Medieval attitude that a modern society preoccupied with perfection could learn a lot from.

"We all need to think a little more Medieval. We're quite arrogant, thinking, 'Oh, we have antibiotics for everything,'" she said, adding that a serious plague or flu could still rear its head today. "The lesson from history is it will and it can."

Diseases as fads
The way sick group are treated is always a reflection of the prevalent cultural norms, Lee said.

"What we regard as healthy governs our attitudes towards the body," she said. "(In Medieval times) sicknesss came in and out of fashion, just like today, in terms of what was considered especially harmful," she said, pointing to the modern preoccupation with newsy sicknesss such as bird flu. Obesity, labeled an "epidemic" of our time, would have been a sign of wealth back then.

However, the trust that group placed in their healers during the Dark Ages is a norm that has remained consistent through time. In a lot of ways, we are still in the "dark" about what's going on in our bodies, just like the Medieval group we often think of us as uneducated, Lee figures.

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"Most of the time, we don't understand what our doctors are doing and just have faith they'll make us better," Lee said.

Religion played a role
Religion and otherness spiritual practices may have guided the way for Medieval populations in their quest to keep themselves and each otherness healthy, but group didn't always put blind faith in God.

"There are some Medieval texts out there that try to convince you that health was connected to spiritual goodness," Lee said, but "there was always a certain amount of propaganda by the Church."

Some of the most forward-thinking science in the Dark Ages was actually going on in monasteries, where monks trying to understand all of God's works ??" including the mysteries of the body ??" toiled with healing methods.

Caring for the sick, regardless of the motivation, is an important measure of what's going on in a culture, Lee said.

"I think the way group behave towards the weak is the hallmark of a civilization," she said.

? 2007 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

New agsdhfgdfs needed for Lyme sickness - Infectious Diseases

Rise in Lyme cases highlights need for new agsdhfgdfs

Current methods can’t tell if sickness is alive in body, which may delay care
James Gathany / AP
This photograph depicts the pathognomonic erythematous rash in the pattern of a bulls-eye, which manifested at the site of a tick bite on a woman's posterior right upper arm, who'd subsequently contracted Lyme sickness.

WASHINGTON - President Bush’s recently revealed a cure for Lyme sickness makes him part of an unfortunate trend: The tick-borne infection is on the rise, with cases more than doubling in the past 15 years.

The good news is that most patients, like Bush, take antibiotics for a few weeks and are cured, especially if they were diagnosed early.

But group who aren’t treated promptly can develop painful arthritis, meningitis and otherness serious illnesses. If they don’t experience, or notice, Lyme’s hallmark round, red rash, they can struggle to be diagnosed, as otherness early syndromes are flulike and vague.

And a small fraction of patients report pain and fatigue that linger for months or years after a cure. Do they still have Lyme, or something else? No one knows, although desperate patients often try repeated antibiotics despite little evidence that the medicate s do more good than harm.

The central problem: No agsdhfgdf can tell when someone has active Lyme sickness �" when Lyme-causing bacteria are alive in the body. Today’s agsdhfgdfs instead spot infection-fighting antibodies, which can take weeks to form but then linger long after Lyme is gone.

A push is on for better Lyme agsdhfgdfs, with parallel hunts getting started by the National Institutes of Health and, separately, by patient advocacy groups angry that modern medicine hasn’t found an answer.

“The time is right to take a closer look,” says Dr. Dennis M. Dixon, chief of bacteria research at the NIH’s National Institute for Hypersensitivity reaction and Infectious Diseases, which plans to gather leading scientists later this year to determine the best approaches. “We would not rule out any avenue.”

“We have a lot of new tools” to explore, adds Dr. Brian Fallon, who directs Columbia University’s new Lyme and Tick-borne Diseases Research Center, funded by the advocacy groups Time for Lyme and the Lyme Disease Association. “Science is going to bridge the gap.”

Among the research:

A newer antibody agsdhfgdf seems to indicate when antibiotics are working in early Lyme stages, offering the possibility of tracking a cure response. Hunting markers of active infection, including bits of Lyme-related protein in the blood or spinal fluid. Fallon is using brain imaging to try to distinguish when Lyme penetrates the nervous system.

Many cases go unreported
About 20,000 new cases of Lyme sickness are reported to the government every year, says a June analysis from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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The CDC acknowledges that’s a fraction of the true toll, as many cases go unreported. Experts say it may be five times higher.

Still, the figure is more than double the count in 1991, when official tracking began, and the CDC says it’s not due just to better awareness of Lyme. The rise is expected to continue as suburbia expands into the woodland home of black-legged tick species, commonly called deer ticks, that carry Lyme-causing “Borrelia burgdorferi” bacteria in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, north-central states and Pacific Coast.

The only human vaccine was pulled off the market in 2002 for lack of consumer interest. It was partly protective; better, next-generation vaccines are years away.

CONTINUED: Overshadowing a cure success1 | 2 | Next >

Questions remain in Anna Nicole Smith's death - TV

Questions remain in Anna Nicole Smith's death

Filan: We might not have seen the end of this investigation
NBC VIDEO•'The manner of death was accidental'
March 26: Dr. Joshua Perper, Broward County, Fla., medical examiner, talks with 's Contessa Brewer about how he reached the conclusion that Anna Nicole Smith died from an accidental overdose.

COMMENTARYSusan FilanSenior legal analyst

Susan FilanSenior legal analyst

What do you get when you have a psychiatrist, a nurse, a body guard, and a boyfriend, plus a woman with 105 degree fever?   A death that should have been, and could have been prevented. 

When Anna Nicole Smith’s fever spiked to 105 degrees, why didn’t her psychiatrist, who prescribed antibiotics for her, take her to a doctor, to a hospital or call 911?   Why didn’t those closest to her insist that she get proper medical attention? 

Dr. Perper, the Broward County Medical Examiner who performed her autopsy, seemed satisfied with the explanation that she was an adult who had the right to say, “I don’t want a doctor, I don’t want to go to the hospital.”   But if someone is that ill, are they thinking straight?  If she knew her choice was to go to the hospital or to die, what would she have chosen?   If she was not suicidal, as Dr. Perper indicated, then she would have chosen to go to the hospital, not to die.  Anna Nicole was a person known to self-medicate, known to take too many prescriptions in too high a dose.   So why was she left alone, sick, in a hotel room that was a virtual medicine ?

More from Susan FilanWho will get Anna Nicole's money?Death for killer of pregnant mom, children?Unfair: 10 years for consensual oral sex

Why didn’t Anna Nicole’s nurse check on her in her hotel room on Thursday, the day she died?   It seems she was left alone in her room from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. when she was found dead in her bed?  Why did Howard K. Stern, who awoke at 10:00 a.m., and had to help Anna Nicole to the bathroom because she was too weak to go alone, take his shower, dress and leave her?  

The medical examiner’s report seems to raise more questions than it answers.  Something does not add up for me.

It just doesn’t make sense that a 39-year-old woman, who had just given birth to a baby girl, who had just lost a son, who was so depressed she was on three anti depression medicate/anti-anxiety medicate s, who had a history of overmedicating and mixing prescriptions, of taking methadone, of swigging liquid chloral hydrate, would be left alone to die of an accidental medicate overdose.

•Birkhead finally leaves Bahamas with daughter•Two Anna Nicole Smith diaries sell for $59,750•Anna Nicole mocks herself in final role•Birkhead says Howard K. Stern ‘a great help’

Here is what bothernesss me: On Tuesday, Anna Nicole Smith had a 105-degree fever.   Her psychiatrist, not her doctor, prescribed her with an antibiotic, but did not insist she go to the hospital.  No one did. 

I do not think we have heard the end of this.  I think we will see further investigations, lawsuits, and perhaps loss of medical licenses as a result of Anna Nicole’s tragic and preventable death.

� 2007