The modern malady

by Cyril Bennett

The disabled weavers had themselves done much to promote the conflicting beliefs concerning them. When forced by growing blindness to abandon their trade, they had been glad enough to make a livelihood by seemingly exercising their supposed supernatural vision, and thus to escape from reproach on the score of idleness; not anticipating that they would but lay themselves open to suspicion of demon-fostering. In fact, they were often self-deceived, for the disease exercised a peculiar effect on the optic nerve, causing them, when they closed their eyes, to see before them a variety of colours and forms which had no objective existence, but which they frequently mistook for Divine revelation.

Time passed on. Notwithstanding the extreme measures taken to extirpate the malady, it spread widely and increased in severity. Again the matter was investigated, and again a meeting was convened.

This august assembly took a different view of the state of affairs from that which had decreed the death of the sufferers. The former enactments were repealed. Indeed, they were declared to be barbarous and unworthy of the community which had so long tolerated them. With singular unanimity it was agreed that the sufferers were really afflicted with some incapacitating disease, the nature of which it was impossible to discover, and for which it was vain to seek a cure. It was supposed to originate in obscure injuries to the arms and legs, but on this point there was difference of opinion. It never occurred to anybody that the malady could have anything to do with impairment of the sight.

The ultimate decision of the court was to the effect that the suffering weavers were to be relieved from the necessity of working for their bread; that they should be permitted to remain a burden on the community; that they should be kept within doors and tended as cripples, and that surgeons should visit them and bandage their legs and arms.

These changes met with universal approval. The more humane members of the tribe, who had shuddered at the former barbarities, were convinced that the millennium had arrived, while the sufferers themselves accepted their fate willingly enough. For though it was dull work to be kept indoors with bandaged limbs, it was infinitely preferable to the hatred and scorn of those around them, to say nothing of a violent and painful death; and though many of them at first wished to use their limbs and to take exercise in the open air on the days when there was no glare to hurt their weak eyes, inactivity was less irksome than constant and futile efforts to fulfil their tasks.

So, at first, every one was contented with the new decisions. True, all the sufferers died sooner or later in a crippled condition, after a more or less miserable and monotonous existence; but this unhappy result was regarded as inevitable, and no further cure was sought for. Even the invalids themselves came to attribute their bodily helplessness to their original complaint, and not to the total disuse and tight bandaging prescribed by the court.

Years went by, and brought no relief either to the disabled weavers or to those who maintained them. On the contrary, the disease continued to increase with frightful rapidity. All classes of the community—which had, for the most part, abandoned its outdoor pursuits—were attacked in turn. Further investigations were made as to the cause of the calamity; a third meeting was convened, and definite conclusions were arrived at.

These, in some respects, showed more knowledge than the conclusions of the second meeting. At the same time they showed less humanity. It seemed as though the pendulum of human feeling had swung violently in the direction of intolerance, then in the direction of tolerance, returning once more, not quite to its former position, but to one far beyond the mean of wisdom and moderation. Possibly the pendulum, in its oscillations, would repeatedly pass and repass this mean point, till its range should grow more and more limited, and it should at length find repose.

The third meeting fully recognised many of the follies and absurdities of its predecessors. Powerful speakers and keen investigators argued with great force and clearness that the incapacity of the sufferers arose entirely from disuse of the limbs, and not from disease. By some of the speakers, this disuse was attributed—with a singular momentary forgetfulness of past decrees—to the wicked deceit of the idle, and of the friends who had solicited public charity in their behalf. The whole community—so these excellent, well-meaning members insisted—had been systematically gulled by the devices of impostors. There was nothing in the world the matter with the disabled weavers and those whom they had infected by their example. They must be forced to behave as if they were well, and well they would become. No doubt their eyes were weak. Whose eyes would not be weak after years of confinement within doors? Blazing sunlight and constant use of eyes and limbs would soon cure their fancies, and these infallible remedies must be prescribed for them at once.

Such cogent common-sense arguments could not but meet with the approval they deserved to meet with in the minds of the common-sense people who heard them. The recommendations of the speakers were promptly adopted.