Bio-warfare In Middle-earth

[William Cloud Hicklin]

The mind of pre-Enlightenment man would consider plague spreading by the air (often in conjunction with earthquakes or volcanoes), by sight, or by touch, but knew nothing of the actual method of transmission.

Why "pre-Enlightenment"? The alleged "Enlightenment"* had nothing to do with it; microbial pathogens weren't discovered until the Victorian age.

Europeans knew well enough what would happen if they gave blankets infected with small-pox to Native Americans.

Actually, they didn't; because what they thought they "knew" was that the Indians would become infected, and in that they were quite mistaken. Rather like Columbus and the Flat Earth this myth is impossible to kill; the story of widespread Evil Whites causing mass epidemics with their smallpox blankets grew out of a single, and entirely unsuccessful, incident, an attempt by Lord Amherst at the siege of Ft Duquesne in 1758. (The smallpox virus cannot survive outside a living host and thus cannot be transmitted via inanimate vectors)


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*I say "alleged 'Enlightenment'" because Voltaire and his fellow salon wankers contributed in real terms very little to human advancement; the Bloomsbury circle or Warhol Factory of 18th-century France. The REAL Enlightenment, the one in which the modern world was created, occurred in the 17th century and was led by men like Newton, Descartes, Leibniz and Locke.

[Andsigil]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Actually, they didn't; because what they thought they "knew" was that the Indians would become infected, and in that they were quite mistaken. Rather like Columbus and the Flat Earth this myth is impossible to kill; the story of widespread Evil Whites causing mass epidemics with their smallpox blankets grew out of a single, and entirely unsuccessful, incident, an attempt by Lord Amherst at the siege of Ft Duquesne in 1758. (The smallpox virus cannot survive outside a living host and thus cannot be transmitted via inanimate vectors)

Thank you. I, too, get tired of hearing this time-worn fallacy.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Why "pre-Enlightenment"? The alleged "Enlightenment"* had nothing to do with it; microbial pathogens weren't discovered until the Victorian age.

On the contrary, Lady Montagu Wortley observed inoculations for smallpox being conducted in the Ottoman Empire (the East always being way ahead of the West at the time), and pushed for the same program when returning home to England in 1718. Cotton Mather conducted smallpox inoculations in Boston in 1721. In 1796, Dr. Edward Jenner discovered immunity to smallpox could be produced by inoculation of patients with the cowpox virus.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Inoculation is not the same - remotely - as the germ theory of disease. It was practical, cause-and effect medical treatment, like the use of willow bark and quinine - and answered no questions as to how diseases are transmitted. Germs would have to wait for Louis Pasteur.

(It's worth pointing out that Lady Worley and Mather were working during the first quarter of the 18th century, still the era of the Genuine Enlightenment).

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I would also dispute "the East always being way ahead of the West at the time"

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Inoculation is not the same - remotely - as the germ theory of disease. It was practical, cause-and effect medical treatment, like the use of willow bark and quinine - and answered no questions as to how diseases are transmitted. Germs would have to wait for Louis Pasteur.

(It's worth pointing out that Lady Worley and Mather were working during the first quarter of the 18th century, still the era of the Genuine Enlightenment).

Certainly microbial pathogens were not "discovered" until the Victorian Age, but they did not discover these in a vacuum. The previous work of van Leeuwenhoek (commonly known as the "Father of Microbiology", who first reported characteristics of bacteria), Robert Hooke, and Spallanzani (who proposed that microbes move through the air and that they could be killed through boiling) were all men of the 18th century.

The "Genuine Enlightenment" has been a period that historians have marked as ending in 1789 (the French Revolution) and even 1804 (the Napoleonic Wars), what is your personal preference? Because I have yet to see any dates cast in stone.

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

I would also dispute "the East always being way ahead of the West at the time"

As far as the use of inoculations (variolations), China is said to have practiced it since the 10th century, and, certainly from a scientific standpoint, I would say the Chinese and the Muslims were far ahead of the West prior to the Enlightenment, or at least the late Renaissance. I don't even think the point is debatable.

But I was trying to make a general point, not bicker about arbitrary dates of epochs that historians do not necessarily agree upon, and whether or not the "smallpox blankets" were effective is besides the point. The effort was made, at least twice; thus, an idea, however misconstrued, of biological warfare.

And the actual use of biological war dates back at the very least to the Black Death (most likely much earlier, but my study has been the Late Middle Ages), when Gabriele de' Mussi reported (a very detailed account much prized by Medievalists for its thoroughness) the Tartars had catapulted plague victims into the besieged town of Caffa in 1346:

“The dying Tartars, stunned and stupefied by the immensity of the disaster brought about by the disease, and realizing that they had no hope of escape, lost interest in the siege. But they ordered corpses to be placed in catapults and lobbed into the city in the hope that the intolerable stench would kill everyone inside. What seemed like mountains of dead were thrown into the city, and the Christians could not hide or flee or escape from them, although they dumped as many of the bodies as they could in the sea. And soon the rotting corpses tainted the air and poisoned the water supply, and the stench was so overwhelming that hardly one in several thousand was in a position to flee the remains of the Tartar army. Moreover one infected man could carry the poison to others, and infect people and places with the disease by look alone. No one knew, or could discover, a means of defense."

They, of course, didn't know the nature of the disease, but knew what the effect could be, in much the same way as English longbowmen of the 13th and 14th century never drew arrows from a quiver, but rather stuck the arrows in the ground in front of them during battle. This served two purposes: 1) they could nock their arrows faster, and 2) the dirt on the arrow heads would make wounds much more likely to fester.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Um, Hooke (1635-1703) and van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) were men of the 17th century, not the 18th.

certainly from a scientific standpoint, I would say the Chinese and the Muslims were far ahead of the West prior to the Enlightenment, or at least the late Renaissance. I don't even think the point is debatable.

It seems to be very fashionable these days in a sort of postcolonial self-deprecation to portray the "barbarous West" relative to the glories of the Islamic world as if at the time of the First Crusade. But the fact is, Islamic intellectual progression in almost all fields had been stagnant since the 13th Century while Europe leaped ahead-... yes, even during the High Middle Ages ("Renaissance" is a term which has meaning in art history, but in little else).

As for dating the Enlightenment? I would say for a round number the nine decades from 1637, the publication of Descartes' Theory of Geometry and Discourse on Method, to 1727, the death of Newton. Although there were still ripples in the 18th-century pond, no real waves appeared until the Scottish Renaissance at the end of the century. One might push back as far as 1609 (Kepler), since he advanced a mathematical astronomy (which also, happily, was essentially correct for the first time).

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

It seems to be very fashionable these days in a sort of postcolonial self-deprecation to portray the "barbarous West" relative to the glories of the Islamic world as if at the time of the First Crusade. But the fact is, Islamic intellectual progression in almost all fields had been stagnant since the 13th Century while Europe leaped ahead-... yes, even during the High Middle Ages ("Renaissance" is a term which has meaning in art history, but in little else).

I would suggest there was very little "leaping" in regards to intellectual progression in the West in the 13th or 14th century. Any leaping that was done was to escape being bludgeoned by mercenary armies, leaping from buildings infected by plague, or leaping from fiefs owned by various lords and abbots and running to hide in the relative freedom of the nearest city. Intellectually, academia was stratified in the rigid confines of monasteries and the monks' adherence to scholasticism. In literature and humanism, you had Dante, Chaucer, Petrarch, Froissart and Boccaccio (with Christine di Pisan the lone outlier of female writing) in a two-hundred year time span.

When you state "'Renaissance' is a term which has meaning in art history, but in little else", I would definitely disagree. The Renaissance was not merely a few Italian artists painting some portraits and sculpting a bust or two, which would certainly be a wretchedly naive outlook on the period, but rather a humanist and secular intellectual explosion.

With the printing presses of Gutenberg, Caxton and Aldus Manutius established in the mid-to-late 15th century, and, in addition, the influx of Greek scholars fleeing to Italy because of the fall of Constantinople in 1453, I would say the intellectual ferment was just as grand as the artistic masterpieces of the era; in fact, the arts of the time were fed by the same thirst for antiquities that fueled humanism and science: Humanists Lorenzo Valla, Pico Mirandola, Machiavelli, Erasmus, Thomas More, Rabelais and Montaigne; the birth of capitalism under the Medici and Fuggers; the sciences with Nicholas of Cusa, Da Vinci (he painted okay too), Copernicus, Giordano Bruno, and later, Brahe, Kepler and Galileo; the architecture of Brunelleschi, Palladio, Bramante -- not to mention the explorations of Magellan, Columbus, Vespucci. It was a time of far more than just art.

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

As for dating the Enlightenment? I would say for a round number the nine decades from 1637, the publication of Descartes' Theory of Geometry and Discourse on Method, to 1727, the death of Newton. Although there were still ripples in the 18th-century pond, no real waves appeared until the Scottish Renaissance at the end of the century. One might push back as far as 1609 (Kepler), since he advanced a mathematical astronomy (which also, happily, was essentially correct for the first time).

French historians usually place the Enlightenment between the death of Louis XIV (1715) and the French Revolution. Others go all the way back to the publishing of Copernicus' work, and still others want to include the remarkable Americans like Franklin and Jefferson and their Constitution. Whatever, it is arbitrary and subjective.

P.S. In any case, I apologize for going so far afield and dealing in such extraneous debate, and returning to Sauron, I still feel he or Morgoth didn't invent the plague; they were either agents for spreading it, or took an evil delight in taking credit for it. Particularly since Tolkien inferred that Sauron, at least, could not control it from decimating his own minions.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Any leaping that was done was to escape being bludgeoned by mercenary armies, leaping from buildings infected by plague, or leaping from fiefs owned by various lords and abbots and running to hide in the relative freedom of the nearest city. Intellectually, academia was stratified in the rigid confines of monasteries and the monks' adherence to scholasticism.

Oh, dear. Yes, that's the cliched version available from a pop-culture vendor near you. Actually, the degree of serfdom, war, plague, famine and instability was no worse and at times rather better than in the tumultuous 16th century, an age of chaos and incessant wars punctuated by pestilence, tyranny and starvation. Compared to the filth and squalor of Elizabethan London, Edward I's London was a clean (if smaller) place with functioning sewers and well-frequented public baths.

Never mind that scholasticism was hardly an unfruitful or straitjacketed endeavor, and it's something akin to Lewis' "chronological snobbery" to deny the intellect of men like Aquinas, Bonaventure and Scotus; the era 1100-1400 also saw Gothic architecture, the windmill, the mouldboard plow, the horse-collar, glass windows, Francis Bacon, the chimney, the hammer-mill, liquor, the astrolabe, the blast furnace, Peter Abelard, the wheelbarrow, the university, Albertus Magnus, trade guilds, crop rotation, eyeglasses, Giotto, the artesian well, the navigational quadrant and carrack that made Columbus & co possible, polyphonic harmony, the mechanical clock, lager beer and Parliament arise in Europe. Oh, and Protestantism too if one counts Wycliffe and Hus (not to mention Francis, Dominic and a whole new version of Catholicism, sadly squelched by the Avignon popes).

In other words, not at all stagnant, and hardly the Monty Python "plague village."

I think it's rather a hidden premise to take the position that intellectual life only counts if it's "humanist;" I would say rather that it became the fashion for authors and poets, like artists and architects, to emulate Classical models. Not unrelated, however, is the fact that the late 15th to early 17th century was also notable as an age of handwaving mystical woo-woo from alchemy to numerology to astrology, and, of course, witch-hunts (not really a medieval phenomenon). You see, the rigorous logic of the scholastic age made it far more an "age of reason" than the anything goes, wildly undisciplined Renaissance.

French historians usually place the Enlightenment between the death of Louis XIV (1715) and the French Revolution.

Well they would, wouldn't they?

Frankly,* the French contributed little between Descartes, Pascal and Fermat (all dead by 1715) and Lavoisier (executed in the Terror). Voltaire was merely the Oscar Wilde of rococo Paris, and Rousseau a charlatan whose influence has been wholly pernicious. "Reason" was just a buzzword, a fad for the fashionable (and put firmly in its place at century's end by Hume and Kant).

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*Pun intended. Forgive me.

[Galadriel55]

Where did the Enlightenment/Renaissance debate come from? It doesn't seem that relevant to the subject, other than specific examples of war tactics, and bottom line, who cares what time period they were technically from, it's the specific examples that matter. Certainly the perception of the plagues in ME could have followed the general view of the spread of diseases before the role of microorganisms was established (and Enlightenment or not, there are still people today who refuse to do some treatments for unscientific, even superstitious reasons. Heck, I refuse to take pills for very unscientific reasons, and I pay my tuition to learn how they work, among other things). It's not what happened in each real-world history period that matters, or where the boundaries lie between periods. Middle-earth history draws ideas in part from real-world history, in part from real-world legends and myths, which makes these topics relevant, but shouldn't make them the subject matter of the discussion.

Originally Posted by Morthoron

P.S. In any case, I apologize for going so far afield and dealing in such extraneous debate, and returning to Sauron, I still feel he or Morgoth didn't invent the plague; they were either agents for spreading it, or took an evil delight in taking credit for it. Particularly since Tolkien inferred that Sauron, at least, could not control it from decimating his own minions.

Certainly. I do not think that Sauron or Morgoth purposefully (or accidentally, for that matter) created the plague. Perhaps I'm taking this too much like a Pandora's box, but it seems to me that once the perfection of the world was ruined, it was ruined with all the ruin known to man at once. It's just that you can't have all the bad stuff happening simultaneously, it happens bit by bit, and it can be controlled and directed. And we know from the horse's mouth that neither one could really create. However, I still believe that the plagues could have been a ripple of the Dark Lords' mood mirrored in nature. Either way, they were not a conscious creation, but just a use of something already present. I might only disagree with you on whether the use of conscious or not, but that's just a matter of personal preference.