History of Hemorrhoids
Perry Gamsby asked:
The plain, simple truth is that hemorrhoids have been with us since our very beginning. It really doesn’t matter whether you are a Creationist or an Evolutionist, whatever your religion, race, color, creed or age, Hemorrhoids are a part of you. Of all of us, just waiting to flare up!
The very word hemorrhoids is made up of two Greek words, heamor and rhoid, which means blood flowing. The ancient Greeks knew of the problem and even the father of modern medicine, Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.), had his own pet remedies!
“Desperate cases need the most desperate remedies,” was his attitude towards the medical treatment of hemorrhoids. He suggested several possible approaches to dealing with these troublesome polyps such as suppositories made of goose grease, alum and urine, but other methods make one cringe even just to read of them.
One method involved simply ripping the polyp off with one’s fingers!! Hippocrates wrote, “Having placed the man over two round stones upon his knees, examine, for you will find the parts near the **** between the buttocks inflated, and blood proceeding from within. If, then, the condyloma below the cover be of a soft nature, bring it away with the finger, for there is no more difficulty in this than in skinning a sheep, to pass the finger between the hide and the flesh. And this should be accomplished without the patient’s knowledge, while he is kept in conversation. When the condyloma is taken off, streaks of blood necessarily flow from the whole of the torn part. It must be speedily washed with a decoction of galls, in a dry wine.”
If removal with a fingernail isn’t enough, think of Plan B! Hippocrates wrote, “Having laid the patient on his back, and placing a pillow below the breech, force out the **** as much as possible with the fingers, and make the irons red-hot, and burn the pile until it be dried up, and so as that no part may be left behind. And burn so as to leave none of the hemorrhoids unburnt, for you should burn them all up. You will recognize the hemorrhoids without difficulty, for they project on the inside of the gut like dark-colored grapes, and when the **** is forced out they spurt blood. When the iron is applied the patient’s head and hands should be held so that he may not stir, but he himself should cry out, for this will make the rectum project the more. When you have performed the burning, boil lentils and tares, and apply as a cataplasm for five or six days.”
One might be forgiven for thinking that Hippocrates had quite extensive experience in managing the condition given his detailed instructions and obvious in-depth knowledge of the reactions of the patient. In the Ancient world, there were no anti-biotics. These life saving drugs and a far more hygienic approach to medicine in general were still two thousand years away. Consequently, to be afflicted with hemorrhoids was a serious problem, as a brief study of Biblical references will prove.
In Deuteronomy 28, we find Moses telling about the benefits of doing the right thing, and the price for batting for the other side! “The Lord will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed” (vs. 27, King James Version).
Most Biblical scholars agree the term “emerods” refers to hemorrhoids. Not something one wants to be smitten with if one can help it! There are also references in 1 Samuel 4-6 which some say may have referred more to the Bubonic Plague but dedicated “Rhoid Researchers” will argue in favour of their favourite blight.
The Latin Vulgate translates 1 Sam. 5:6 — “And He smote them in the more secret parts of their posteriors.” The ancient Syriac and Arabic versions read the same. This would certainly seem to suggest hemorrhoids! Some scholars feel this is being alluded to in Psalm 78:66 — “And He smote His enemies in the hinder parts.” The mind boggles just how many references there are to the condition and how prevalent it must have been in those days.
One major account is the story of the Philistines. They fought the Israelites and captured their Ark of the Covenant, not a good day for Israel. Apparently they lost 30,000 troops in the battle and the Philistines went off well pleased with their efforts (1 Sam. 4:10-11) “And the slaughter was very great; for there fell of Israel thirty thousand foot soldiers. And the ark of God was taken”
The Philistines had a very highly organized city-state system, with five chief cities ruling their land: Gath, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gaza, and Ekron (1 Sam. 6:17). Each of these chief locations was ruled by a “lord” (1 Sam. 6:18). The ark was brought to one of these chief cities (Ashdod), and it was placed in the temple of their god Dagon, who was the supreme god of the Philistines. Now the story has it that the head of the temple was smitten and lost his hands, but there was more to come. All the Philistines were punished with hemorrhoids!
“But the hand of the Lord was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and He destroyed them, and smote them with emerods, even Ashdod and the coasts thereof” (1 Sam. 5:6, KJV). Not necessarily slow on the uptake, the people of Ashdod realized it was time to get rid of the Ark of the Covenant. They decided to send it to one of the other five great cities of the Philistines: Gath. However, the people of Gath fared no better. “He smote the men of the city, both small and great, and they had emerods in their secret parts” (1 Sam. 5:9, KJV). The ark was then quickly sent on to the city of Ekron, but “the hand of God was very heavy there. And the men that died not were smitten with the emerods; and the cry of the city went up to heaven” (1 Sam. 5:11-12, KJV). All of this took place over a period of about seven months (1 Sam. 6:1).
You can imagine the reaction of the people of Ashkelon when it was their turn to host the Ark! “You’re not bringing that thing in here, buddy!” In the end they returned the Ark to the Israelites who had also been suffering a fair bit of the same for losing the thing in the first place and all settled down for a while until the next crisis hit the Middle East. Part of the punishment the Israelites endured was to make five golden emerods and place them in the Ark. If the Ark is ever found and opened, technically speaking you should be able to find five gold models of hemorrhoids within. I can’t wait.
The Romans had their remedies for hemorrhoids, mostly taken from the Greeks and so, too, at the same time the Chinese a world away. The condition is not choosey; so long as you are human you can become a victim. Chinese medicine included the usual range of Western treatments but also added bathing in the fresh urine of infants, something that many thought had magical powers of rejuvenation. The ancient Chinese practitioners held that it was a kind of angiopathy which was commonly found among the people, and a saying goes that “of ten persons nine have hemorrhoids.”
Detailed discussion was recorded in traditional medical literature of the time. In Su Wen Sheng Qi Tong Tian Lun (Treatise on Communication of Vitality with Heaven, Plain Questions) it states: ” Too much food intake causes injury and flaccidity of vessels, leading to hemorrhoid.” This is the initial theory of varicosity. It was held that the disease cause was related to integrated internal factors and local external factors. Even back before Jesus walked the road to Jerusalem the Chinese were taking a holistic approach to the problem.
In Arab lands along with mathematics and architecture, medical science progressed apace but hemorrhoids continued to be something for which the best cure was always avoiding being afflicted in the first place. They took a lot of the knowledge available at the time from the Greeks and Romans and added to the body of knowledge with their own medical treatises. Interestingly, the Islamic world spread from the Iberian Peninsular to India and covered vast distances and numerous variations in terrain as well as new herbs and other forms of treatment never known to exist to the Greeks and Romans. Islamic scholars also wrote their medical books in verse, making it easier for the student to learn and recall the various signs, symptoms and treatments. They introduced remedies such as Horse Chestnuts and Aloe.
Medieval Europe had “piles” among the many afflictions that made life fairly miserable and increased the risk of an early death. Anyone who lived past forty was often considered either a saint or a witch, the life expectancy at the time being so short. There is actually a patron saint of hemorrhoids, St. Fiacre. During Medieval times, hemorrhoids were known as St. Fiacre’s curse. St. Fiacre, is also known as the patron saint of gardeners as he was told he could farm all the land he could manage to cultivate in a single day. He was given a rather small shovel by his not too generous bishop. So he could grab as much land as possible, he spent a very long day spading his garden and developed a severe case of prolapsed hemorrhoids. Seeking a solution, he sat on a stone and prayed for help. The legend states he enjoyed a miraculous cure and apparently the imprint of St. Fiacre’s hemorrhoids remains on the stone today. This I have to see! Hemorrhoid sufferers from all over the world continue to sit on this stone and pray for relief.
St Fiacre left his native Ireland and went to France where he is accredited with curing Kings Louis XIV and Louis XV of fistulae, (a type of ulcer), after they prayed to St. Fiachra (he was well gone by then). So many people were thus cured of this ailment that it is known in France as “La maladie de St. Fiacre”, (St. Fiacre’s ailment). King Henry V of England, after the Battle of Agincourt (1415), allowed his soldiers to vandalise the shrine of St. Fiachra at Meaux and carry off the relics of the saint although they were later returned. By a strange coincidence, Henry died later of hemorrhoids. By an even stranger coincidence, Henry died on August 30th, the feast day of St. Fiachra.
“Rambam Maimonides, 1135 – 1204, the most influential Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages, and quite possibly of all time” according to Time Magazine, December 23, 1985, suggested the use of Rue Oil as a treatment. Rambam was studying and using healing plants for natural health care treatment and cure, and wrote valuable books about natural medicine. He warmly recommended and used Rue Care Oil for natural treatment and cure of hemorrhoids (piles), **** fissure and varicose veins.
Hemorrhoids have been the bane of life for Kings and Queens, Heads of State, revolutionaries, Generals and paupers and everyone in between. In olden times people did die from the bleeding and infection and even today, improperly treated or ignored, hemorrhoids can become a far more serious issue than they really should be.
Thrombosed Hemorrhoid Treatment
The plain, simple truth is that hemorrhoids have been with us since our very beginning. It really doesn’t matter whether you are a Creationist or an Evolutionist, whatever your religion, race, color, creed or age, Hemorrhoids are a part of you. Of all of us, just waiting to flare up!
The very word hemorrhoids is made up of two Greek words, heamor and rhoid, which means blood flowing. The ancient Greeks knew of the problem and even the father of modern medicine, Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.), had his own pet remedies!
“Desperate cases need the most desperate remedies,” was his attitude towards the medical treatment of hemorrhoids. He suggested several possible approaches to dealing with these troublesome polyps such as suppositories made of goose grease, alum and urine, but other methods make one cringe even just to read of them.
One method involved simply ripping the polyp off with one’s fingers!! Hippocrates wrote, “Having placed the man over two round stones upon his knees, examine, for you will find the parts near the **** between the buttocks inflated, and blood proceeding from within. If, then, the condyloma below the cover be of a soft nature, bring it away with the finger, for there is no more difficulty in this than in skinning a sheep, to pass the finger between the hide and the flesh. And this should be accomplished without the patient’s knowledge, while he is kept in conversation. When the condyloma is taken off, streaks of blood necessarily flow from the whole of the torn part. It must be speedily washed with a decoction of galls, in a dry wine.”
If removal with a fingernail isn’t enough, think of Plan B! Hippocrates wrote, “Having laid the patient on his back, and placing a pillow below the breech, force out the **** as much as possible with the fingers, and make the irons red-hot, and burn the pile until it be dried up, and so as that no part may be left behind. And burn so as to leave none of the hemorrhoids unburnt, for you should burn them all up. You will recognize the hemorrhoids without difficulty, for they project on the inside of the gut like dark-colored grapes, and when the **** is forced out they spurt blood. When the iron is applied the patient’s head and hands should be held so that he may not stir, but he himself should cry out, for this will make the rectum project the more. When you have performed the burning, boil lentils and tares, and apply as a cataplasm for five or six days.”
One might be forgiven for thinking that Hippocrates had quite extensive experience in managing the condition given his detailed instructions and obvious in-depth knowledge of the reactions of the patient. In the Ancient world, there were no anti-biotics. These life saving drugs and a far more hygienic approach to medicine in general were still two thousand years away. Consequently, to be afflicted with hemorrhoids was a serious problem, as a brief study of Biblical references will prove.
In Deuteronomy 28, we find Moses telling about the benefits of doing the right thing, and the price for batting for the other side! “The Lord will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed” (vs. 27, King James Version).
Most Biblical scholars agree the term “emerods” refers to hemorrhoids. Not something one wants to be smitten with if one can help it! There are also references in 1 Samuel 4-6 which some say may have referred more to the Bubonic Plague but dedicated “Rhoid Researchers” will argue in favour of their favourite blight.
The Latin Vulgate translates 1 Sam. 5:6 — “And He smote them in the more secret parts of their posteriors.” The ancient Syriac and Arabic versions read the same. This would certainly seem to suggest hemorrhoids! Some scholars feel this is being alluded to in Psalm 78:66 — “And He smote His enemies in the hinder parts.” The mind boggles just how many references there are to the condition and how prevalent it must have been in those days.
One major account is the story of the Philistines. They fought the Israelites and captured their Ark of the Covenant, not a good day for Israel. Apparently they lost 30,000 troops in the battle and the Philistines went off well pleased with their efforts (1 Sam. 4:10-11) “And the slaughter was very great; for there fell of Israel thirty thousand foot soldiers. And the ark of God was taken”
The Philistines had a very highly organized city-state system, with five chief cities ruling their land: Gath, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gaza, and Ekron (1 Sam. 6:17). Each of these chief locations was ruled by a “lord” (1 Sam. 6:18). The ark was brought to one of these chief cities (Ashdod), and it was placed in the temple of their god Dagon, who was the supreme god of the Philistines. Now the story has it that the head of the temple was smitten and lost his hands, but there was more to come. All the Philistines were punished with hemorrhoids!
“But the hand of the Lord was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and He destroyed them, and smote them with emerods, even Ashdod and the coasts thereof” (1 Sam. 5:6, KJV). Not necessarily slow on the uptake, the people of Ashdod realized it was time to get rid of the Ark of the Covenant. They decided to send it to one of the other five great cities of the Philistines: Gath. However, the people of Gath fared no better. “He smote the men of the city, both small and great, and they had emerods in their secret parts” (1 Sam. 5:9, KJV). The ark was then quickly sent on to the city of Ekron, but “the hand of God was very heavy there. And the men that died not were smitten with the emerods; and the cry of the city went up to heaven” (1 Sam. 5:11-12, KJV). All of this took place over a period of about seven months (1 Sam. 6:1).
You can imagine the reaction of the people of Ashkelon when it was their turn to host the Ark! “You’re not bringing that thing in here, buddy!” In the end they returned the Ark to the Israelites who had also been suffering a fair bit of the same for losing the thing in the first place and all settled down for a while until the next crisis hit the Middle East. Part of the punishment the Israelites endured was to make five golden emerods and place them in the Ark. If the Ark is ever found and opened, technically speaking you should be able to find five gold models of hemorrhoids within. I can’t wait.
The Romans had their remedies for hemorrhoids, mostly taken from the Greeks and so, too, at the same time the Chinese a world away. The condition is not choosey; so long as you are human you can become a victim. Chinese medicine included the usual range of Western treatments but also added bathing in the fresh urine of infants, something that many thought had magical powers of rejuvenation. The ancient Chinese practitioners held that it was a kind of angiopathy which was commonly found among the people, and a saying goes that “of ten persons nine have hemorrhoids.”
Detailed discussion was recorded in traditional medical literature of the time. In Su Wen Sheng Qi Tong Tian Lun (Treatise on Communication of Vitality with Heaven, Plain Questions) it states: ” Too much food intake causes injury and flaccidity of vessels, leading to hemorrhoid.” This is the initial theory of varicosity. It was held that the disease cause was related to integrated internal factors and local external factors. Even back before Jesus walked the road to Jerusalem the Chinese were taking a holistic approach to the problem.
In Arab lands along with mathematics and architecture, medical science progressed apace but hemorrhoids continued to be something for which the best cure was always avoiding being afflicted in the first place. They took a lot of the knowledge available at the time from the Greeks and Romans and added to the body of knowledge with their own medical treatises. Interestingly, the Islamic world spread from the Iberian Peninsular to India and covered vast distances and numerous variations in terrain as well as new herbs and other forms of treatment never known to exist to the Greeks and Romans. Islamic scholars also wrote their medical books in verse, making it easier for the student to learn and recall the various signs, symptoms and treatments. They introduced remedies such as Horse Chestnuts and Aloe.
Medieval Europe had “piles” among the many afflictions that made life fairly miserable and increased the risk of an early death. Anyone who lived past forty was often considered either a saint or a witch, the life expectancy at the time being so short. There is actually a patron saint of hemorrhoids, St. Fiacre. During Medieval times, hemorrhoids were known as St. Fiacre’s curse. St. Fiacre, is also known as the patron saint of gardeners as he was told he could farm all the land he could manage to cultivate in a single day. He was given a rather small shovel by his not too generous bishop. So he could grab as much land as possible, he spent a very long day spading his garden and developed a severe case of prolapsed hemorrhoids. Seeking a solution, he sat on a stone and prayed for help. The legend states he enjoyed a miraculous cure and apparently the imprint of St. Fiacre’s hemorrhoids remains on the stone today. This I have to see! Hemorrhoid sufferers from all over the world continue to sit on this stone and pray for relief.
St Fiacre left his native Ireland and went to France where he is accredited with curing Kings Louis XIV and Louis XV of fistulae, (a type of ulcer), after they prayed to St. Fiachra (he was well gone by then). So many people were thus cured of this ailment that it is known in France as “La maladie de St. Fiacre”, (St. Fiacre’s ailment). King Henry V of England, after the Battle of Agincourt (1415), allowed his soldiers to vandalise the shrine of St. Fiachra at Meaux and carry off the relics of the saint although they were later returned. By a strange coincidence, Henry died later of hemorrhoids. By an even stranger coincidence, Henry died on August 30th, the feast day of St. Fiachra.
“Rambam Maimonides, 1135 – 1204, the most influential Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages, and quite possibly of all time” according to Time Magazine, December 23, 1985, suggested the use of Rue Oil as a treatment. Rambam was studying and using healing plants for natural health care treatment and cure, and wrote valuable books about natural medicine. He warmly recommended and used Rue Care Oil for natural treatment and cure of hemorrhoids (piles), **** fissure and varicose veins.
Hemorrhoids have been the bane of life for Kings and Queens, Heads of State, revolutionaries, Generals and paupers and everyone in between. In olden times people did die from the bleeding and infection and even today, improperly treated or ignored, hemorrhoids can become a far more serious issue than they really should be.
Thrombosed Hemorrhoid Treatment
