Lifeâor perhaps I should say deathâwas so much easier in the old days.
As end-of-life researcher Joanne Lynn puts it, life-threatening illness would âstrike without warning and you get through it or you donât.â
Effective treatments were few. Doctors would often prescribe âremediesâ such as bloodletting, purges, enemas and blistering, and âmedicinesâ such as mercury, lead and arsenic that did more harm than good. Many were positively horrific.
George Washington died after he was treated with blister beetle extract applied to his throat and he was drained of about 40 percent of his blood volume.
There were guides like Ars moriendi (âThe Art of Dyingâ), a popular work originally published at the time of the Black Death, that encouraged acceptance, and told you how to die gracefully, without succumbing to lack of faith, despair, impatience, spiritual pride or avarice.