DESPERATE PEOPLE DO DESPERATE THINGS (PART I)


“The Woman with the Issue of Blood”

By Akin Ojumu

Distinctively poignant and spectacularly surreal, the story of the woman with the issue of blood is the fateful encounter between a bruised and battered woman who had spent twelve years of her life battling a debilitating plague of chronic menstrual disorder and our compassionate Great Physician who has power over sicknesses and diseases.

The 12-year ordeal that led this desperate woman to this point was marked with agony, anguish, rejection, and ostracization. Under the provision of the Mosaic Law, the menorrhagic woman was condemned to the fringes of society as an outcast. Everything and everyone she touched was automatically unclean, requiring sin offering and burnt offering. They avoided her like a plague so that she would not infect them with her impurity and sin. When people saw her coming at a distance, they fled in the opposite direction.

Leviticus 15:25-28
“If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time of her menstrual impurity, or if she has a discharge beyond the time of her impurity, all the days of the discharge she shall continue in uncleanness. As in the days of her impurity, she shall be unclean. Every bed on which she lies, all the days of her discharge, shall be to her as the bed of her impurity. And everything on which she sits shall be unclean, as in the uncleanness of her menstrual impurity. And whoever touches these things shall be unclean...”

Desolate, desperate, and despondent, this poor woman went everywhere and to anyone, frantically searching for a cure for her affliction. In the Gospel account of her dire situation, we are told she consulted with many physicians who subjected her to all kinds of medical abuse and malpractice. 

Mark 5:25-26
“And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse.”

This woman had endured unimaginable torture from untold number of quacks who took advantage of her vulnerability for their own personal gain. Not only did the conmen fail to provide her with the cure she needed, but their quackery also caused her condition to deteriorate even further. With cavalier ruthlessness, the charlatans drained the poor woman of all her resources and then left her exponentially worse than they met her.

These so-called physicians are thought to be the Jewish religious leaders who had very little knowledge of medicine. The clinical practice guideline for their quackery is codified in the Jewish Tradition of the Elders, aka the Talmud, which is the detailed, oral laws that the Pharisees and Scribes added to the Mosaic law, and which they considered authoritative.

For instance, the Babylonian Talmud lists eleven treatments for excessive menstrual bleeding. These treatments include wide ranging prescriptions such as boiling various items in wine, such as Persian onions, cumin, saffron, fenugreek, or a fern, and having the woman hold it and the physician declaring to her, “Cease your discharge.” She may also be told to sit at a crossroad, holding a cup of wine, while a man comes from behind and frightens her, shouting, “Cease your discharge!” Another type of cure calls for her to rub flour on the lower half of her body. 

In addition, she may be told to burn thistles or an ostrich egg and wrap it in cloth. The last of the prescriptions is particularly weird. It involves the woman fetching barley grain found in the dung of a white mule and holding it in her hand. If she holds it for one day, her bleeding will cease for one day. If she holds it for three days, the bleeding will cease forever (Source: BibleRef).

The poor woman with the issue of blood tried all of these and then some, but none of them stopped her flow of blood. She went from one quack to another, but they could not cure her affliction. For twelve long years, she endured her misery, until the fateful day when she encountered the Great Physician who would make her whole.

Stay tuned till next time.

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