Changelings/Autism- It is amazing how closely the symptoms of autism (especially the more sever forms) match up with old descriptions of changelings. Imagine that you have this lovely child that seems to be perfectly healthy, then one day you start to notice your once loving child refuses to be touched. The child pulls away from it's family, has outbursts over the oddest things, seems to hyper-focus on seemingly pointless tasks. With no frame of medical reference, it would make sense to feel that your child had been replaced by a strangers baby. Other illnesses that tend to manifest in childhood may also have contributed to the changeling myth. What I personally find so fascinating about these clear descriptions of autism (excuse me while I climb my up on my soap box for a moment) is that it seems to point towards autism being around for a lot longer then people think. I know many a child that has not been immunized because somebody convinced them that autism wasn't around until we started immunizing our kids, or that autism is new and contingent on pollution and environmental factors. While certain environmental factors may play a role (we still don't know a lot about autism) stories about changelings and their dead on descriptions show us that in all probability kids have been afflicted with autism for much longer then anybody realizes, and definitely long before immunizations (getting down of my soapbox now).
Epilepsy/Demonic Possession - Anybody who has had, or witnessed a seizure can tell you it is pretty terrifying. As an EMT I have dealt with many many many seizures and every time it hits you how crazy it looks. We know for the most part what causes seizures, but can you imagine back before we had a name and a cause for it, seeing a person just start contorting, flailing, uttering strange sounds, eyes rolling into the back of their heads. It is no wonder that people were convinced an evil spirit had taken possession of a loved one. It got even worse when a person had a disease like epilepsy that caused seizures on a regular basis. It's one thing for a person to suffer one seizure (caused by a high fever or extreme illness), but then be "rid of the demon" and never have another episode. It would be quit another back in the day to continue these seizures even after a ceremony to excise the demon. This also lead to a lot of unnecessary incarcerations and even deaths.
Ergotism/Witchcraft-Who would have thought something as innocent as rye flour could be a possible cause for the hysteria of the Salem Witch Trials? Among the usual jealousy, over zealousness, and greed which is really all a group of people really need to persecute their fellow man, a theory that a crop of rye may have been infected with a fungus that when consumed produces some very interesting effects. There is an LSD like hallucinogen affect for some people. A person could suffer from debilitating stomach pains, akin to being stabbed in the belly (which many "victims" of the "witches" described during the trial" There may be sores, neurological issues, and mania. Any time a large number of people had unexplained pain or illness, they just attributed it to witchcraft, because really what else could it be. The biggest problems came when there was no obvious cause for the pain, if I accidental cut myself and see it bleed and feel the pain, it is not witchcraft, if my stomach feels like somebody is stabbing it, but I don't see any marks or can find no cause, then it might be witchcraft. It is interesting to see in history how people can take even the most minor of things and blow them out of proportion.
Oh man there are so many more of these especially when you start dealing with things like schizophrenia, OCD, porgeria, just so many illnesses that we now if nothing else can name as a scientific disease. This is why it is so important to keep writing stories and keep reading books, it gives us a glimpse into the past and shows us that we are dealing with some of the same things today as people did hundreds of years ago. It will be int resting in 100 years for future humanity to read our books and stories and say "hey I think they were talking about (insert name of some undiscovered ailment here), can you believe this is what they thought it was?" Humans have a need to have an explanation for everything, especially when things go wrong. Before we had science and wide spread education, people used magic to try and explain the unknown. Thinking over some of the more contemporary books I've read, I think this generation tends to write about more intangible illnesses, mostly of the mental variety. Liar is a good example of a modern folk lore take on a potential mental illness. It is written in the same feel and style as a way to explain something that may not yet be explainable.
What diseases/illnesses do you recognize in your favorite folk tale? What diseases do you think future generations will look back at us and shake their heads over? Do I read way to much into simple stories?
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