Florina Codreanu
Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
florina.codreanu@lett.ubbcluj.ro
Mythological and Scientific Blood
Abstract: Given its controversial history, from divine essence to a mere organic fluid, blood has been at the heart of various theories, approaches and rituals since ancient times, engendering both fascination and fear. Subject to professionalized medicine, it was also subject to manipulation and exploitation according to needs, and therefore in danger of becoming the provider of scientific opportunism and at times abuse. Until the scientific revolution huge quantities of blood were thought to be produced and destroyed daily within the human body. The key moment in history was the replacement of Galen’s treatment of the venous and arterial systems as two separate systems by William Harvey’s concept that blood circulated from the arteries to the veins ”impelled in a circle, and is in a state of ceaseless motion”.[1] Despite the discovery of blood flow, the science of blood didn’t instantly become a domain of its own, but played the game of mythology by using the same type of mystification. Confusion over the territory of each still prevails nowadays and if their intergrowth is necessary in the general stream of history or not represent the stake of the present paper.
Keywords: Blood; Medical imaginary; Philosophy; Religion; Humors; Taboo.
Through different cultural ages knowledge course in the science of blood (hematology) was as precarious in its methods as ambitious in its intentions boiling down repeatedly to one principle: a possible end justifies any possible means. The principle led to a series of erroneous judgments and hazardous, sometimes fatal, practices[2]. Besides, the well-defined phases of a far more reliable principle, namely the cybernetic one, were disregarded in favor of a simplified two-phased approach. The first phase of direct knowledge or a priori information was followed immediately by the third phase of action dismissing the intermediate phase of reflection. Until the 19th century thinkers pursued action on the grounds of an alleged knowledge. That is why over the centuries medical studies experienced a range of classifications from instinctive in primitive times when man reacted to the imminent danger nearby, intuitive which assumed knowledge risen from human senses, empirical assembling beliefs such as animism, fetishism, magic, witchcraft, shamanism, astrology and so on, sacerdotal lodging cure in the hands of priests to naturist in the intimate present of postmodern society. The case of a rational medicine, without being dogmatic, based on facts, experiments and proofs was more or less avoided on the basis of a mythological tradition from which it legitimates accordingly. With respect to this appreciation science defines itself as altogether impure, i.e. perverted by the ordering power of myth[3]. At a first tackling the history of medicine reveals an imaginary[4] more real in representations, projections and illusions than reality itself. However, medicine evolution will be proven not just structural and rigid, but also dynamic and diverse, maintaining a long-running coexistence with philosophy and religion.
Starting with classical Greek antiquity the first medical studies were deep-rooted in philosophical knowledge and any pathological phenomenon was explained through the rupture initiated between the human being and the universe, particularly between the human body components: antibodies – blood or hormones – organs. More frequently the doctrine of the four humors launched by Hippocratic medicine was able to explain the harmony (eucrasia) or disharmony (dycrasia) of the human body: ”The doctrines of Ionian philosophers about ’primordial elements’ were widely used by physicians, and especially by the advocates of humorism, for explaining most of the physiological and pathological phenomena. Reflections of Pythagorean doctrines appear mainly in the Hippocratic Oath…”[5] Within the trend of humorism, the Greek concept of pneuma (or air, breath, spirit) functioned as an omnipotent regulator invested to nurture the bonds amongst humors and regulate their fair mixture. Considered inborn, pneuma is supposed to circulate through the whole body together with the blood in a similar itinerary performed by the god, named himself also pneuma and being spread around the whole cosmos[6]. For Empedocles, the Greek pre-Socratic philosopher, the psyche (or soul, vital principle, anima) is the blood and represents the most perfect and proportioned mixture of elements. Moreover, reason (reality perception) is believed to be produced within the blood and concomitantly the heart is invested the centre of reasoning, the seat of Mind: ”The circulatory system, and especially Heart, was unceasingly in the close attention of physicians and healers from everlasting. The active principle of life, pneuma, was propelled through the heart in all the limbs and organs of the human body according to the ancient Indians, Mesopotamians, Egyptians and Greeks […]. This standpoint was preserved in dogmatic medicine (or scholastic) from Medieval Ages. Only after the year 1500, heart started to be interpreted from anatomical point of view as ’organ’ and no more as ’soul’.”[7]
Despite the sophist character of Corpus Hippocraticum that valued rhetoric and determinism as adjuvants for its argumentation, the human body was understood for the first time as a unity beyond religious adherence. Within the humoral system the role of blood was capital in determining the temperament of the individual: In classical Greek medicine, blood was associated with air, with springtime, and with a merry and gluttonous (sanguine) personality. It was also believed to be produced exclusively by the liver[8]. Due to its wet and warm quality, blood was also responsible for the age of the individual, namely for his youthfulness. Along with old age there is a metaphysical bleeding: the blood retires from its main position and phlegm, which is cold and dry, takes over. Symbol of regeneration and vividness, blood was at the same time the scapegoat of Hippocratic medicine for many diseases incorrectly thought to be produced by an excess of blood. Consequently, bloodletting and leeching were practiced as treatment-integrated interventions.
Inasmuch as in ancient times medicine was acknowledged as an Art that sustains Life or a special form of workmanship, speculation became an instrument of investigation. On one hand there was devotion and high involvement, on the other, medical invention was scientifically ineffective. The risk of dogma replacing lacuna could be traced throughout the medical praxis up to Renaissance and not only. The grand fail before the spring of rationalism consisted in imagining blood merely in its exteriority, not inside the system it belonged to. The ethical and religious taboo associated to human body, along with the prohibition on human dissections, is to be blame for the misapprehension of the bodily fluids network: ”This way scholastic enforced on medicine a view remote from reality and highly compliant with the canons which fully denied experience. Nevertheless, Galen’s personality governed the medieval thinking until the Renaissance Age, both with its positive and most deniable initiatives”.[9] Since the beginning of the 3rd century Hippocratism had existed under the mirror of Galenic interpretation, namely he explained and falsified in a dogmatic system the Hippocratic ideas. In addition he struggled to put together in a theological and fideist manner Hippocrates’s theory of humors and Asclepiades of Bithynia’s atomist conception of life. The result was one millennium and a half of spiritualist dogmatism. Galen’s teleology was so influential that it discharged the value of a potential realist method giving course to a sic volo type of thinking: Blood had circulated within the veins and arteries, following the fantastical courses imagined by Galen, before William Harvey discovered the real mechanism[10].
Once regained out of the medieval obscurity, medical science underwent a double tendency of returning to the ancient golden age and of advancing through utopian rationalism. Anyway, exaggerated rationalization didn’t introduce the knowledge of blood in the area of science and reason was still displaying a mythological basis. During Renaissance a science-based religion got full control. Then Francis Bacon re-exploited the doctrine of humors, reaching the conclusion that human fluids had to be dense enough in order to restrain the spirit from leaving the body. The final purpose is to hold on to the consistency of blood and other organic liquids. More and more the human being became responsible for his biological capital, for the way he makes use of it. Henceforth the practice of blood transfusion enhanced the hope of surviving old age: ”The procedure was revolutionary, but based as usual on older phantasms. Blood as vital principle and youthful blood as a means of rejuvenation are to be found within an archetypal framework of beliefs and symbols[11].” Thus, in the second part of the 17th century blood transfusion appeared together with the revelation that blood drives the human being into disease or death, wherefore it has to be replaced by a younger one and only in the year 1900, along with the discovery of blood groups by Karl Landsteiner, the precious younger blood is going to be dethroned by a compatible blood.
Also, in the Age of Enlightenment – when Reason becomes the newly proclaimed God and destiny from Christian faith is put aside by the law of history – there was a harsh reevaluation of the old schemes, a general oppressive tendency to organize the world in groups of four: four elements, four temperaments, four humors, four races, four continents etc.
In the meantime, the indisputable failure of Reason was glossed over by certain discoveries towards which the contemporary public eye maintained a slight interest and sometimes even aversion. That was the case of William Harvey who in 1628 brought into the open the data of his discovery of the circulatory system through the work An Anatomical Exercise of the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals[12]. From that moment onward, the Galenic separation of venous blood (thought to have originated in the liver) and arterial blood (in the heart), each endowed with different functions, was done away with slowly but surely. Blood produced and consumed inside the body shaded in the light of Harvey’s proof that blood is actually recycled. In a like manner, the theory of vital heat supported enthusiastically by ancient Greek physicians, by Galen in the 2nd century and by Avicenna in the 11th century found its fading away along with the gradual discovery of fluids and organs real function: ”Aristotle argued that the source of innate heat must be the heart, because, when the warmth of the heart is quenched (compared to other organs) death ensues. […] The pulsation of the heart is ’similar to boiling’, caused by this innate heat expanding the blood. However, the innate heat must be moderated, or else it will burst into self-consuming flames. The necessary cooling is accomplished by air from the lungs, carried to the heart by hollow air tubes, the pulmonary vessels[13].” As a metaphysical curiosity, blood temperature lied with the collaborative performance capacity of the heart and lungs like a thermal power station may function.
If at this point Lucian Boia’s[14] definition of history was taken into account all the past authors’ self-delusion should be excused right away: ”History was born from the permanent confrontation between matter [reality] and dream [imaginary][15].” In short, myth and reason coexist and do not succeed as the common belief strove for. The defense techniques exalted by mythological blood[16] met the functioning techniques appropriated by scientific blood on a common ground in history: manipulation, tendency to gain human control over a substance perceived as miraculous, embodiment of the sacred, elixir of immortality, fountain of youth and any other promising property.
Irrespective of the times, blood referred mainly to life promotion and glorification: Indo-European paganism used the term blót for sacrifice and the act of sprinkling blood on the walls, gods’ statues or participants was called bleodsian in Old English. Roman Catholic Church borrowed the word and blessen in modern English would become bless and blessing[17]. By the same token bloodshed was a ritual practice demanding God’s complete approval. The Old Testament abounds with prescriptions for blood management during sacrifices: ”Then you shall take part of the blood that is on the altar, and of the anointing oil, and sprinkle it upon Aaron and his garments, and upon his sons and his sons’ garments with him; and he and his garments shall be holy, and his sons and his sons’ garments with him” (Exodus 29:21). Altogether, a hard to handle substance, blood that was at least once shed beyond divine laws it has to be returned to its originator. As a sign of the divinity, blood is in the position to require tribute, judgment and punishment: ”For your lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning; of every beast I will require it and of man; of every man’s brother I will require the life of man” (Genesis 9:5). Any act of impiety against blood (such as blood consumption, contagion during woman’s delivery or menstruation, endogamy, adultery, murder etc.) incurs reclusive measures by applying the principle blood for blood: ”I will set my face against that person… and will cut him off from among his people” (Leviticus 17:10) or ”Praise his people, O you nations; for he avenges the blood of his servants, and takes vengeance on his adversaries, and makes expiation for the land of his people” (Deuteronomy 32:43).
Surprisingly, after centuries of scientific development and ground gain to the detriment of religion, the mythological feeling of guilt induced by blood reappears in medical mythology in the form of an important vector of infection: With Aids, the shame is linked to an imputation of guilt…[18]. Herein blood is the bearer of a shameful sin, the trigger of a separation psychosis based on hatred and suspicion, an eighties American holocaust derived from sexual terrorism. Personal disease turns into social disease whereas punishment addresses the individual, not the society: ”Aids is the other man from existentialist literature…”[19]. Medical failure is a moot point employing a religious rhetoric of the end of the world and a military rhetoric of the immunologic war indicating the end of the civilization, too: ”Aids had caused in the contemporary world a profound spiritual crisis”[20]. Blood betrayal is more obvious than ever engaging the body in a process of humiliation for embracing the final status of outcast. For the first time in the history of social representations blood appears as the closest death giver because the virus that installs in the macrophages (white blood cells) doesn’t only proliferates, but actually kills the cells: ”Now the generic rebuke to life and to hope is Aids”[21]. Due to growing homophobia (fear of blood) physical death is preceded by social death: ”Life-blood, sexual fluids-is itself the bearer of contamination. These fluids are potentially lethal. Better to abstain. People are storing their own blood, for future use”[22]. Paranoia, the power of the blood to symbolize any mythological threat, to be taken for a concept of disorder, not for a mere organic fluid, is the product of an anti-historic thinking unable to react positively to unknown. The sad failure of present society in adapting to death projects onto the infected individual through conspiracy of silence and taboo reassertion[23].
The last remaining option against the death anxiety is offered by the concepts of cloning, manipulating the genetic design and DNA recombination. Artificial blood could be the millenarian hope of saving man from his mortality. The discourse upon human species control and reform, upon totalitarian eugenics gets revived through the project of defeating history, religion and medical ethics, whilst using all their trump cards. That would be a postmodern exemplification of the perversion of science.
Corroborated with the phenomenon of death, blood seems to have found the limits of its interpretation. In fact, it is just the emergence of a different paradigm: blood as the mirror image of violence and death. One relevant evidence is brought in by the so-called Maligno Art of the nineties, a genre of graphic arts that uses red as dominant color (of the blood and fire) in order to express mankind obsession, namely violence, its intrinsic evil: ”As the blood and fire are the main pillars of this art movement, the brutal death of human beings is the pivot of the artwork. Decapitations, mutilations and savage shootups are common ’leitmotivs’. But the satanic theme is also well developed, as it also depicts hatred and fear without the need of deaths. As the largest part of the world’s population is follower of Abrahamic religions, they fear the Devil, with the concept of Satan as God’s antagonist and Mankind’s biggest enemy being the main prejudice”.[24]
Blood rebellion and haste is a challenge as much faced by art as by science, by both its mythological and rational extent. From one respect, there is blood evolution caught in its creative process, wherein interchange is the leading force: the whole that may become everything considering its mythological basis. From the other respect, there is blood identity within a conformist discipline that can circumscribe intelligibly the whole considering its scientific prestige. Not prevented by the existing scheme of things, the history of blood reveals permanent interrelations between fantasy and reality, imaginary and science. The use of mythological based practices in medicine brought on serious dangers, but the consequences have to be analyzed nowadays inside the thinking system, period and possibilities of the epoch. To return to Boia’s concept, all confrontation is necessary as long as the parts involved don’t dismiss for ever their differences.
In conclusion the medical science of antiquity progressed towards modernity in a fluent manner, without the instrumentality of other epochs, maybe because the self-awareness of the discipline wasn’t powerful enough owing to constant encouragement of false pretences and imposture. Medical care regulated by different codes in ancient times was exchanged for negligence and popularity-based praxis particularly during medieval ages. The cult of the snake[25] that appeared in Hippocratic medicine and afterwards in modern medical blazonry for expressing caution wasn’t effectively present amongst its disciples. The same caution should be also the keystone in the research and study of blood when dissociating scientific arguments from mythological thinking.
Notes
[1] William Harvey, De motu cordis, cited in Allen G. Debus, Man and Nature in the Renaissance, Cambridge University Press, 1978, p. 69.
[2] E.g. Human transfusions using animal blood, though had caused death to many people, was practiced until the 19th century without any worry for the issue of incompatibility. Also, along history blood was used for bathing and drinking in order to cure some deadly infectious diseases.
[3] ”Myth is a structure, not ’the matter’; it can use true or fictive materials or true and fictive material at the same time, the essence rests in the fact of managing them both under the rules of the imaginary”, in Lucian Boia, Pentru o istorie a imaginarului, trad. din fr. de Tatiana Mochi, Humanitas, Bucureşti, 2006, p. 39-40.
[4] For instance black bile, the humor responsible for melancholia, doesn’t exist, but the humoral doctrine lingered on in medicine by the pinnacle of modern era.
[5] Hipocrate & Galen, Multum In Parvo, Prezentaţi de Dr. Gh.Brătescu şi Dr. C.Săndulescu, trad., note şi comentarii de C. Săndulescu, Editura Enciclopedică Română, Bucureşti, 1974, p. 8.
[6] See Peters, Francis E., Termenii filozofiei greceşti, trad. de Dragan Stoianovici, Humanitas, Bucureşti, 1993, p. 229.
[10] Boia, Lucian, Tinereţe fără bătrâneţe. Imaginarul longevităţii din antichitate până astăzi, trad. din fr. de Valentina Nicolae, Humanitas, Bucureşti, 2006, p. 64.
[12] The Works of William Harvey M.D. Physician to the King, Professor of Anatomy and Surgery to the College of Physicians, Translated from the Latin with A Life of the Author by Robert Willis M.D., Printed for the Sydenham Society Instituted MDCCCXLIII, London MDCCCXLVII.
[13] Lutz, Peter, The Rise of Experimental Biology: An Illustrated History, Humana Press, 2002, p. 30.
[14] Lucian Boia is a renowned Romanian historian who put forth his long-running endeavors to lay the basis for a new discipline in Romania, namely the history of the imaginary, in a consistent and methodological manner.
[16] Frazer, Sir James George, The Golden Bough: a Study in Magic and Religion, third edition, Macmillan and Co. Ltd. London, e-book released in 2003, XXI Tabooed Things, 4. Blood tabooed, p. 156: ”Jewish hunters poured out the blood of the game they had killed and covered it up with dust. They would not taste the blood, believing that the soul or life of the animal was in the blood, or actually was the blood”.
[18] Sontag, Susan, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors, Picador USA, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2001, p. 112.
[19] Sasu, Aurel, Prefaţa Meditând la boală, în Susan Sontag, Boala ca metaforă. SIDA şi metaforele ei, trad., prefaţă şi tabel cronologic de Aurel Sasu, Editura Dacia, Cluj-Napoca, 1995, p. 7.