Pacific Views

Visions & Vitamin C

From Sex, Time, and Power by Leonard Shlain:

The lack of vitamin C can create unusual side effects. Aldous Huxley in his book Heaven and Hell posed the question why so few people in modern culture see visions or exerience the kind of religious ecstasy that was so commonly recorded back in the Middle Ages. The literature of that time is replete with reports of these phenomena, occurring on a regular basis to ordinary people. When someone in contemporary society claims "to talk to God, hear voices, or see visions," we often admit them to the psychiatric ward to cure them of what the rest of us would consider deranged behavior.

Huxley attribited the relative disappearance of trance states in contemporary society to improvements in diet, and he proposed this as a major factor in lessening the influence of the Church. Prior to these developments, Europeans endured long, cold winters during which there was an absence of fresh fruit. Scurvy, the medical name for vitamin C deficiency, was pandemic. To make things worse, in the dying days of winter, the Church mandated that everyone fast for Lent. Body reserves of proteins and fats already depleted by poor winter diets would have created the conditions of borderline starvation. Nerve transmissions in the brain, verging on serious disreptions, would begin to falter.

Adding to the complications of near starvation was the religious practice of self-flagellation, which the Church tacitly encouraged. A whip applied to the thick skin of the back excoriated it, leaving long superficial lacerations, not deep enough to cause death but severe enough to cause bleeding and anemia. The wounds, superimposed on a body reeling from the effects of incipient starvation, would then begin to suppurate. A low-grade bacterial infection would incrementally add to the debility of one who had scurvy, anemia, and starvation. These conditions would coalesce just as Easter approached. The mental states of many people were so affected by these dietary deficits and systemic toxicities that whole cities had mass hallucinations. Clerics in an age of extreme religiosity assumed that they were bona-fide revelations.

One wonders how many "visions" were due to cholesterol-starved, ascorbic-acid-deficient, linoleic-acid-deprived, amino-acid-depleted neurons trying to cope with the toxicity associated with a subclinical streptococcal and/or staphylococcal infection. The predictable result: the overt syndrome of delirium. Such are the hidden factors that may influence history.

So, what's Jerry Falwell & James Dobson's excuse? They're in no danger of suffering malnutrition.