Blood-Vital for Life! - WHAT OF USING BLOOD AS MEDICINE?

Would the Biblical prohibition on blood cover medical uses, such as transfusions, which certainly were not known in the days of Noah, Moses, or the apostles?

While modern therapy employing blood did not exist back then, medical use of blood is not modern.  For some 2,000 years, in Egypt and elsewhere, human "blood was regarded as the sovereign remedy for leprosy."A physician revealed the therapy given to Kink Esar-haddon's son when the nation  of Assyria was on the leading edge of technology.  "[the prince] is doing much better; the king, my lord, can be happy.  Starting with the 22nd day I give (him) blood to drink, he will drink (it) for 3 days. For 3 more days, I shall give (him blood) for internal application."  Esar-haddon had dealings with the Israelites.  Yet, because the Israelites had God's Law, they would never drink blood as medicine.

Was blood used as medicine in Roman times?  The naturalists Pliny (a contemporary of the apostles) and the second-century physician Aretaeus report that human blood was a treatment for epilepsy.  Tertullian later wrote:  "Consider those who with greedy thirst, at a show in the arena, take the fresh blood of wicked criminals . . . and carry it off  to heal their epilepsy."  He contrasted them with Christians, who "do not even have the blood of animals  at [their] meals. . .  At the trials of Christians you offer them sausages filled with blood.  You are convinced, of course, that [it] is unlawful for them."   So, early Christians would risk death rather than take in blood.

"Blood in its more everyday form did not. . . go out of fashion as an ingredient in medicine and magic," reports the book Flesh and Blood.  "In 1483, for example, Louis XI of France was dying.  'Every day he grew worse, and the medicine profited him nothing, though of a strange character, for he vehemently  hoped to recover by the human blood which he took and swallowed from certain children." 

Next time: Blood-Vital for Life! -Conclusion of WHAT OF USING BLOOD AS MEDICINE?

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