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Originally Posted by Galadriel55
The correctile dysfunction has flared up, and I want to say that while I do not think the Black Breath is a form of infectious pathogen, technically those symptoms could be caused by one. After all, there are also very physical "symptoms" of coma and death. If we're talking about viruses, then viral encephalopathy is on the table. There are parasitic infections like Sleeping Sickness. And prion diseases, which don't give these exact symptoms but are more like infectious rapid dementia, but are another form of "infecting" the brain. Can't think of a bacterial infection that would make you go to sleep and die without also giving prominent other symptoms, but it's not impossible.
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I will absolutely defer to those who know quite a bit more than me on matters of their expertise, and I think that you're basically providing evidence for my "the Black Breath is a supernatural weapon patterned on a biological one" (by Sauron, I mean--though that exact statement applies to Tolkien too...).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Galadriel55
Honestly though, I think that the Black Breath is indeed an illness of the will, putting it more in the realm of the psychological. And I thought Aragorn equally was able to rescue the victims not through a specific taught skill, but through his own willpower and its interaction with those around him. I think Faramir's passage in the Houses of Healing is what most supports that interpretation. Perhaps is was a passed down knowledge that a person who is able to feel another's soul or what have you with his own would be able to interact with it directly, but credit goes to Aragorn for being that man rather than just learning a forgotten skill.
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Yeah, the extent to which Aragorn brings healing knowledge that could have been known by someone else (I'm looking at you, loremaster) or also something that is more ontological is quite debateable. Tolkien very clearly has him, as the returning King, bringing something that no one else could bring and it's telling that Gandalf treats him as Faramir, Éowyn, and Merry's only hope. Nonetheless, I don't think I'm too far astray in thinking that there's SOME skill involved that could have alleviated things and that this lore was lost--the comments about Ioreth and old wives are especially directed this way.
A mixture of both the supernatural (the angelic blood of Lúthien) and the natural (lore) is very Catholic, perhaps even to the level of "consciously so in the revision," a case of grace building on nature. But it also fits that the Black Breath, which is clearly supernatural and natural (in the sense that it produces physiological symptoms, if not that it is caused by germs).