Making Health a Human Right

Like Animals - Then -

Over 80% of the people in the Middle Ages lived as Peasants and personal property of their landlords, in total illiteracy and in great poverty.

We live in historic times. Mankind is currently undertaking one of the great movements in its history: The liberation of our health from the yoke of a medicine driven by the „ business with disease“. It is the liberation of our bodies and health towards natural medicine that prevents commercialism and eradicates diseases effectively without harmful side effects. Together we are writing history.

Once before in this millennium a similarly comprehensive liberation took place, the liberation of the human mind. 500 years ago, despite the relentless resistance of those in power at that time, millions of people in Europe achieved the right to read and write. The liberation of the human mind 500 years ago ended its century long slavery during medieval times and, at the same time, gave birth to modern times.

To understand the dimension of the changes that liberated humanity forever, I invite you to join me on a journey 500 years back in time. Come with me to a time when those in power kept millions of people poor and ignorant to the extent that they differ from their house pigs only by their ability to stand upright. This time travel is meant to be a historic eye opener, and is not intended to criticize any religion.

Millions Live in Poverty

Like in this contemporary drawing by the medieval painter Albrecht Dürer, millions of peasants lived during the 16th century in poverty fighting a daily battle for survival.

Imagine you live somewhere in Europe around the year 1500. Chances that you were born to a poor peasant are great because more than 80% of the people in Europe at that time were peasants. If you were lucky, you owned a tiny piece of land, but more likely you were the personal property of the landlord who owned the land in your area. But you were not alone, most of your neighbors and contemporaries were the personal property of their landlords. Two thirds of whatever you earned went to the landlord. At least 10% of what you made was taken away by the church. What was left was too little to live on and too much to die on.

Most people in Europe’s villages died before they reached the age of 50. That one day the average life expectancy would reach 75 or 80 years is something you do not know. Life is hard. Of course, life as we know it today does not exist at that time. But you do not know that because day in and day out you are primarily concerned with nurturing your living children. Two of your children died at birth. The other 3 died before they reached their first birthday and you were told that God had called them to heaven. You did not know that they were killed by the polluted drinking water in the nearby pond that served also as a bathtub for the village because micro organisms and infectious diseases would be discovered centuries later.

Two of these three children died during the last winter, which was particularly long. In December their gums started to bleed and the bleeding increased with every piece of bread they chewed. In January your children’s skin became paler, almost whitish and they were too weak to stand up. By the end of January both of them were dead. But this was no exception, since your neighbors and the peasants in the nearby village shared the same fate. Most of the people actually died during the winter months, but this winter was particularly harsh. You do not know that this mega-death during wintertime is caused by scurvy and vitamin deficiency because this connection will not be discovered for centuries to come.

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Millions are Illiterate

No one in the village asks why half of the children die before they reach the age of five, although some of the people suspect that it has to do with malnutrition. But, at second thought, everyone is happy when death finally takes the children away because it ends their suffering, and children were believed to go directly to heaven. After the sermon at the cemetery the priest at that time consoled you and promised you a reunion with your children in heaven. The condition for this reunion, of course, was that you continued your life in modesty, poverty and total submission to the rulers of the land and the church. Your sorrow is brief because the struggle for survival continues.

From sunrise to sunset you work in the field. Your wife and children are also helping because otherwise you can not pay the taxes to the landlord and the church. The ruler’s envoys who collect the taxes are without mercy. Those who do not pay are incarcerated. Many of your neighbors have lost everything they had to the landlord because the tiny piece of land they had just did not provide for the huge taxes claimed by the rulers. While they were sitting in prison their tiny piece of land and their hut were taken away. For the families of those incarcerated, this was a verdict of death. Those who were incapable to survive as beggars were dying. No one dared to protest because this was how things were to be. It was inconceivable to you, that the landlord was intentionally rising the taxes in order to drive the peasants into bankruptcy and thereby acquire their land.

Life is a burden. But this is how God has designed it said the church at that time. They also tell you, that it is written in the Word of God that it is easier for a camel to walk trough a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. You think, if this is so, it is better that I do not own any property. After all you would like to go to heaven at all costs. According to the church at the time, heaven is a land where milk and honey flows in rivers. This is where you want to go when you die. No price is to high and no burden to heavy in order to reach this goal.

Every night you lie down on the straw sack beside your wife and mumble to yourself: another day less on the stony path to paradise. The thought, that your poverty does not please God but solely the rulers of the land and the church has never crossed your mind. For this thought to occur, you would have to question everything you have ever heard and learned from those placed above you by destiny.

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