THE BIBLE AND MEDICAL SCIENCE. (1)

A few weeks ago, one of our daughters feeling very ill went to a hospital in Belgium where she was put in quarantine after telling a nurse that a doctor had told her that she had the Clostridium difficile bacteria, also called C. difficile, which is quite contagious. After three days, when they found that she did not have this, she was released from the hospital. I had to smile when I heard about the quarantine, not because of her being so ill, of course, but because Moses 3,500 years ago already put people in quarantine. When talking about a person with leprosy, which is also contagious, he writes in Leviticus 13:46, “He shall be unclean. All the days he has the sore he shall be unclean. He is unclean, and he shall dwell alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.” AMAZING. “Alone, outside the camp,” means isolated, in quarantine. That practice of isolating sick people helped save Europa in the middle ages. From 1346 until 1353 the Plague or Black Death killed at least 1/4 to 1/3 of Europeans, millions of them. It took Europe 200 years to get back to the same population level as before the Plague. “A historical turning point, as well as a vast human tragedy, the Black Death of 1346-53 is unparalleled in human history,” says Ole J Benedictow at History Today. Quarantine was unknown, except among the Jews, where there were few deaths. The second thing that helped stop the Plague was following Moses instructions in Deut.23:12-13, “Also you shall have a place outside the camp, where you may go out; and you shall have an implement among your equipment, and when you sit down outside, you shall dig with it and turn and cover your refuse.” In the middle ages people had no toilets, they relieved themselves everywhere, on the street, behind their houses, along the road etc. Or they had pails in the house which they used and then emptied it outside on the street. One can well imagine what the smell was in the cities and towns. The rats moved through this, the insects sat on it, the water was polluted, and people became sick. And because the healthy people lived with the sick, the disease spread rapidly. Again, this was not so in Jewish communities and this was noticed, resulting in the Jews being blamed for the spread of the disease and a terrible persecution of the Jews resulted. However, when the instructions of Moses written 3,500 years ago were put into practice, the Plaque slowly came to an end. AMAZING. How did Moses know these things? (To be continued).