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 nearly torn apart. 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 witnessed 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; while 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 vital 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 grace.” 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 grace 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 which 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.
† the guttural 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.
