Superstition doesn’t work! This reminds me of the black plaque that swept the old country in the 17th century, like nothing ever swept it. 25 million people died victims of that plague. People dropped like flies.

It is called the black plague for two reasons:

1. Black blotches marked the body of the victims.

2. Blackness of ignorance.

People didn’t know what caused it. They didn’t realize any sense of cure. So they were trapped. Someone came with the idea that it was caused by polluted air. If you could somehow make the air fragrance fresh, the plague would leave. Many quickly accepted that idea.

Still more died. May of 1665: 590 died; June of 1665: 6100 died; July of 1665: 17 000 died; August of 1665: 31 000 died …

2/3 of Europe fled their homes. The victims filled the hospitals. Doctors were working on a strange concoction to cure the plague. Somehow they thought that if they could change the air fragrance of the victims, it would relief them of the plague.

Victims that were able to walk were taken outside the hospital. Holding hands they walked around in circles in the rose garden and breathed in deeply the fragrance of roses, thinking that somehow this would replace the pollution that was in their lungs.

Physicians who had their pockets filled with the posies’ plant visited those who could not walk. They would walk around the bed of the victim sprinkling the posies’ plant around the bed. If the victim were close to death, the physician would hold a spoonful of ashes and hold it in front of the patient’s nose until he/she sneezed. This should clear the lungs!

In reality fleas from diseases rats caused the plague, rodents that bit their victims.

This gave the rise to a children’s song that we learned in nursery school:

Ring around the rosies,

Pocket full of posies,

Ashes, ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

That song was first heard from the lips of an old man, pushing a cart, throwing bodies on it, in the alleys of London.

Superstition is NEVER the answer!

As heard from Chuck Swindoll