Roma … gangraena … crurifragium As extraordinary as the horrifying detail (both historical and anatomical) provided here may be, Gibbon’s silence on the subject is almost as shocking. He likely maintained it because of how close the narrator comes to describing the Passion of Jesus Christ: Gibbon probably felt (and if so, correctly) that Burke would have already been inclined to view this brief description as near-blasphemous, without any further elaboration on his own (Gibbon’s) part.
Textually, we again encounter the use of Latin, apparently employed, here as elsewhere, not only to further convince us of the old man’s knowledge and erudition, but out of disdain: the narrator’s own contempt for the sadism of Roman punishment rituals is obvious and palpable, and is echoed in the translator’s sudden use of what we now suspect to have been the bitter and perhaps pejorative title for Rome, Lumun-jan. Gangraena, meanwhile, is again the Latin (and therefore, in Barbarian Age and medieval Europe, the official medical) term for gangrene, clearly meant to display the old man’s great medical knowledge; while crurifragium refers to a little-known detail of many Roman crucifixion rituals. Victims of this already nightmarish torture often lived—like Jesus—for a day or even two on the cross, in almost unimaginable agony: as the text here says, almost every joint, especially in the upper body, was either torn or horrifically strained. The only “relief” that the unfortunate prisoner could even try to get was offered by the block of wood placed beneath his feet, which he could use to hoist himself up by his feet and legs. But after enough time, and as much out of tedium and the need to return to more important duty as out of any sense of mercy, the Roman guards supervising the ritual would use a mallet to break the victim’s shins: which, as anyone who has ever broken or known someone who has broken these bones knows, is a particularly painful fracture to endure. The victim would either die instantly of the shock of this final outrage, or, being as he was unable to further support himself, quickly suffocate, the position of his arms having already badly constricted his breathing.
Again, any suggestion that such Romans had anything to learn about torture from “the East,” as Gibbon elsewhere implies, is quite clearly revealed, here as always, to be fatuous. What the narrator calls the “fiendishness” of the Kafran religion—so clearly embodied in the at least partial ligature and cauterization of both the flesh and the arteries and veins (mainly those descending from the femoral, the popliteal and tibial) of the severed legs, which was, as the text says, intended to avoid their victims’ bleeding out too quickly—cannot realistically be contested. This point alone would have been enough to justify the stridency of Burke’s reaction in his letter to Gibbon. —C.C.
derived from … opium and … Cannabis indica We never learn the old man’s precise methods for such derivation, although we know in modern times that such strengthened alkaline drugs (as opposed to their chemical imitators) are their most potent and least dangerous forms. Opium, of course, leads most immediately to heroin and morphine, the latter almost certainly what is meant in the Manuscript when “opium” is referred to, as its uses are always medicinal rather than recreational; as to Cannabis, prior to the twentieth century, Cannabis sativa, our own marijuana or hemp plant, was not only used in the production of rope (the fibers of its stalk being particularly strong), but was commonly available from druggists and pharmacies (no prescription required). This was true going back to the ancient world: the ostensible use of the drug was as a sedative and narcotic painkiller but, then as now, there were many people who used (and abused) it recreationally. The subspecies indica, which came from, among other places, the mountains of what are now Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, was preferred in the West precisely because of its hardy nature, which allowed it to survive in the climates and mountains of northern Europe (and North America) as easily as it did in warmer climes; but indica was also considered by doctors and folk healers as superior to other subspecies of Cannabis for medicinal reasons, because it supposedly produced greater pain and anxiety relief with fewer of the “druggy” side effects. For this reason, it was often reduced to its resin form (what we know as hashish, the Arabic word for the resin), which doctors in the West would eventually market—as they did morphine, cocaine, and other narcotics—as a commonplace medication that could be eaten or drunk as a tincture, thus avoiding the telltale signs and physical dangers of smoking or injection. Whether the claims that indica was less stupefying than, say, the other sativa subspecies has, however, long been in doubt; and some drug researchers have argued for the formalization of indica as its own species of Cannabis.
It is also worth noting that, from ancient times to the late nineteenth century, such unregulated drug use did not produce greater numbers of addicts and “fiends”; whereas the illegalization of such substances (like the prohibition of alcohol) created an entire “subspecies” of violent criminals. The society of Broken was an excellent example of this: Cannabis was one of the only crops the Bane could grow in the harsh wilds of Davon Wood, and was one of their most prized trading crops (cultivated land within Broken itself being used exclusively for subsistence agriculture); yet the Bane themselves showed no signs of having been a race of marijuana abusers. —C.C.
the dauthu-bleith Gibbon writes, with the same frustration we have seen elsewhere, “Here, once again, the influence of Gothic upon the dialect of Broken is hinted at, for this term almost certainly arises from that language: although we do not yet have the capacity to translate it literally, the spellings and word combinations are far more indicative of Gothic than they are of Old High German.” Developments since Gibbon’s time have allowed linguists to corroborate Gibbon’s speculation, and to more precisely translate this phrase as akin to a Gothic “coup de gre.” It had originally been translated simply as “condemned [or sentenced] to death,” but bleith is one of several Gothic terms for “mercy”; and, as the original meaning of coup de gre is a “merciful” as much as a “finishing” blow, it seems that the most recent translation relates the true intent more clearly. —C.C.
his new, insulted form The word “insulted” is used in one of its archaic forms, here, to mean “assaulted,” “injured,” or “demeaned”; Gibbon makes no note of it, as it was still generally used in this sense during his own time (as opposed to being specifically used in the verbal or medical sense, as is the case today). —C.C.
prevent festering and control fever Here we get a good idea of the old man’s pharmacological skills: despite the above average medical knowledge that Gibbon had gleaned through coping with chronic physical problems of his own, the extent of the old man’s understanding of the medicinal power of plants remained a mystery to the later scholar, as it would have to most people (even most doctors) in the eighteenth century. Hops represent an excellent case in point, particularly the wild hops that the old man would have found growing in the mountains that became his refuge: long before they were first cultivated as an ingredient in beer in the eleventh century, hops were recognized as having very real “anti-festering,” or antibiotic and antibacterial, powers, as well as narcotic effects (although this particular label was almost certainly unavailable to Barbarian Age healers). Similarly, honey was used (as it continues to be used, by some homeopathic and tribal healers) as an agent against sickness and infection, although many of the people who made or make such use of it did and do not realize that the human body metabolizes honey as hydrogen peroxide. Citric acid taken from fruit, meanwhile, can kill bacteria in both wounds and on food, as well as in the digestive tract (which is the original reason that lemon was used as a condiment on raw oysters). The extract of certain willow barks (as is more popularly known) provides a naturally occurring form of aspirin, and it was and is sought as an analgesic. The roots and flowers the old man initially used are not mentioned specifically, but we can imagine that they must have included wild species of such families as nightshade, or the Solanum genus—which, in uneducated or evil hands, had long been sought as the poison “deadly” nightshade, or belladonna, but wh
ich were also used (more carefully) as hypnotic anesthetics. In short, given the old man’s situation at this key point in his recovery, he could scarcely have assembled a better set of ingredients to use as both poultices and infusions, and there is no contesting that his knowledge was extensive, indeed. —C.C.
so guttural were its sounds Given the conjectures already made about the old man’s possible origins, we’re faced with several candidates for this language of “guttural” sounds: certainly, it could have been a proto-Baltic tongue, but it could just as easily have been one of the early German dialects, including Broken’s own. —C.C.
laboratorium Gibbon writes, “You may be tempted, my friend, here as elsewhere, to think that this use of a later form of a Latin term (this for ‘place of work’) is a contrivance of the Manuscript’s translator—yet he assured me that the term appeared in just this form in the original text. As to why, or even how, the narrator of the tale should have been aware of that later form, hints again at his temporal inconsistencies; and, things standing as they do in the narrative, we can but note it, and press on.” Unfortunately, we can offer no deeper insight today: unless the narrator was the first to use this original version of “laboratory,” or the old man himself was, we are hard-pressed to say how it made its way into the document. —C.C.
Bactria, and from India beyond Bactria was the fabled and very independently minded province, or satrapy, of the Persian Empire in southwest Asia. Most Bactrian territory comprised lands that today form much of Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. Conquered but never really pacified by Alexander the Great, these ruggedly fertile hills, mountains, and valleys continue, in our own time, to produce some of the most potent opioids, as well as other narcotics, in the world—and have also continued to be a thorny problem for would-be Western conquerors or liberators, as American soldiers have recently spent over a decade discovering. —C.C.
wild Davon sheep The phrase is evidently taken at face value by both the translator of the Manuscript and Gibbon, despite the fact that for “wild” sheep to have existed in the lands between the Erz and Harz mountains, they would almost certainly had to have been domestic sheep that had become feral; and, while such a development is certainly possible—there were several places in Europe where flocks of sheep were known to have undergone just such reversion—it would have represented a new phenomenon for Barbarian Age or medieval Germany. In addition, the fact that the old man is said to have “harvested” the wool suggests that these sheep were either of a variety that simply shed their fleece during warm spring and summer months (certainly, he could not have captured and shorn them) or that his companion hunted them and brought them back to the cave for meat. The latter seems by far the most likely explanation, since, while “shedding” of fleece is not unheard of, especially among feral sheep, it is not a common occurrence, and would likely not have yielded the quality or quantity of wool that the old man required. —C.C.
metallourgos The Greek root of “metallurgy,” and seemingly left untranslated, again, to give us some idea of the breadth and depth of the old man’s knowledge: if he wrote Greek, we can logically assume that he spoke it, at least enough to conduct technical conversations with the most advanced scientific minds of his age. —C.C.
alchemical sorcerer The fiction that alchemy was purely or even primarily a science devoted to vain attempts to turn lead into gold persists into our own day, and certainly dominated in the periods leading up to Gibbon’s: perhaps the greatest scientific mind of his own or any age, Sir Isaac Newton, was deeply fascinated by alchemy, but had to work hard to keep his experiments a secret, one that would keep him from the often-gilded gallows reserved for those convicted of the supposedly black art.
The truth is that alchemy and metallurgy were, in ancient times, almost indistinguishable: after all, when a man could turn rocks into such precious metals as iron, and then iron into that supreme (along with gold) utilitarian metal—steel—the transformation did seem otherworldly, indicative not only of the possibility of changing one metal into another, but of attaining some superior mystical and perhaps spiritual state. Certainly, what the old man was doing and experiencing in Davon Wood during the period described in this section of the Broken Manuscript more than fits under these scientific and spiritualistic rubrics. —C.C.
his most precious books First, it’s important to remember, here, that the word “book,” in the pre-Gutenberg Dark Ages, was a very transitional term: it not only included early, bound stacks of parchment (often called folios), but also more informally fastened collections of parchment, such as the old man was producing during his time in Davon Wood; and finally, it also referred, very often, to “books” in the sense that the Romans knew them, volumen (obviously, the precursor of the modern “volumes”), which were the rolled parchment scrolls of which mention has already been made.
As to the specific books mentioned in this list, most speak for themselves; although perhaps the most interesting feature of the collection is the inclusion of the Strategikon, a Byzantine military manual concerning, in the main, cavalry tactics (heavy cavalry being the mainstay of the Byzantine army) but also dealing with other important issues, such as discipline in an army and how best to achieve it (as well as what punishments to mete out for infractions), and what would today be called “military anthropological” studies of the peoples that made up the main enemies of the Eastern Roman Empire (although the emperor Maurice, the compiler and main author of the work, ambitiously spoke of the Roman Empire as unified under his rule). The Strategikon, like the work of China’s Sun Tzu, is a work of a startlingly enduring nature, with impressive implications for modern military organization and conduct, both on the battlefield and off; but Maurice has enjoyed none of Sun Tzu’s modern vogue, a new edition of the Strategikon having only recently appeared, after a long absence from bookstores in the West. This new enthusiasm likely has to do with the important comments Maurice and the other writers who contributed passages to the work made concerning styles of warfare between large states and non-state enemies, what we would today call counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. Certainly, by applying the precepts included in the book to the intellectual wasteland that was Western European military doctrine and practice during his own lifetime, the old man could indeed have presented himself in any court as a near “sorcerer” of war—a fact that would have brought him renown and wealth, while placing his services in high demand, thus explaining why he was so consistently welcomed in courts throughout the region, and was also allowed, during his sojourns in such places, to pursue medical experiments—notably dissection—that, while once common in cities such as Alexandria, had become ghoulish anathema to Christian and Muslim nobilities and leaders.
As to the remainder of the authors cited, only one statement by the narrator may seem questionable, because of its seeming political incorrectness: the claim that Procopius and Evagrius had determined that most if not all outbreaks of the bubonic plague—Yersinia pestis and its related disorders—originated in “Ethiopia.” Historical research, however, has proved the theory that the disease most often known simply as “the Death” originated in that region: the rats who carried the fleas that were and remain the initial spreaders of the contagion (which has never entirely disappeared, a vaccine against it never having been developed) apparently boarded Nile trading ships, and reproduced wildly, as did their fleas, in the granaries of Egypt, whence they took ship for all the major ports of Europe. Further genetic research on the subject remains to be done (see the authoritative volume edited by Lester K. Little, The Plague and the End of Antiquity), but it seems altogether likely that, whether politically correct or not, the Justinian Plague of the old man’s era (the outbreak having occurred sporadically during the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, taking its name from the Byzantine emperor Justinian, who was struck down by it, but survived) did indeed follow this geographical contagion pattern. —C.C.
pains Gibbon validates this account of the old man’s experiments w
ith soldiers, as well as his self-diagnosis, by remarking that “such pains are a thing which almost anyone who has known a soldier, sailor, or ordinary citizen who has lost a limb to war, mishap, or disease can confirm, and in which many scholars who were also medical professionals or simply possessed medically inclined minds took an interest. [Ren Descartes [1596–1650] himself took welcome time away from his syllogistic aphorisms to investigate the subject, although praise for its initial identification rightly belongs to an earlier Frenchman, the surgeon and anatomist Ambroise Par[1510–1590], royal physician to no less than four French kings, who described patients who had undergone amputation feeling continued pain, not at the site of the severing, but in the missing limb itself. He noted, as well (further agreeing with our as-yet anonymous friend in the Manuscript), that this pain could be heightened with the onset of certain atmospheric conditions—what we have come to know as rapid changes in barometric pressure—as well as by the aggravation of the general state of agitation in which the patient lived: the root of this last assertion being that drugs which had sedative but no analgesic effects proved to be of use in reducing the distress. Many other, lesser lights have studied the phenomenon, but we are no closer to understanding it than was the former court physician of Broken.” Today, the psychogenic distress experienced by amputees—which was given its popular name of “phantom pain” by the American physician and surgeon Silas W. Mitchell, who, working in the 1860s, was provided with no end of subjects for study by the American Civil War—is better understood; but the entire subspecialty of neurology that deals with such problems as severed nerves, neural entrapment in scar tissue, etc., remains one of the most challenging fields in medicine, as the persistent distress caused by the cutting of nerves (which can be a result of surgical malpractice or even surgical routine, as much as or more than by amputation or accident) endures as a principal cause of chronic pain syndromes. —C.C.