62 A.D.: Seneca's view of life helped him cope with asthma

I am in love with Seneca the Younger.  He was an asthmatic with allergies just like me, only he suffered with the disease over 2,000 years ago.  His descriptions of the disease were simply amazing, yet more impressive was the way he learned to cope, and the way he wrote about how asthma made him a better person simply for having experienced it.   

And even more amazing is the methods that he developed to conquer his asthma. He wrote that you cannot dwell on the past and say things like, "Oh why me?" You cannot say things like, "No one had ever been in such a bad state." You cannot say things like, "The torments and hardships I endured." These thoughts should be banned, he wrote, because they are of little use. Dewlling on what ailed you in the past does you no good. (1)

Seneca

Likewise, he wrote that you cannot worry about an asthma attack that will strike you in the future either, because that will do you no good.  What you need to do is try to make the best of your life right now.  You need to clear your mind of such evil thoughts.

In his 78th letter to his friend Lucius he wrote that those who suffer through the battle of an asthma attack are like the boxer who suffers even during the trials of training. He wrote that a boxer does this for wealth and fame. He wrote, "Let us too overcome all things, with our reward consisting not in any wealth or garland, not in trumpet calls for silence for the ceremonial proclamaiton of our name, but in moral worth, in strength of spirit, in a peace that is won for every once in any contest fortune has been utterly defeated." (1)

He wrote this over 2,000 years before I wrote my post The Seven Benefits of having Asthma and Seven Ways Asthma has Benefited my Life. I wrote pretty much what Seneca wrote to his friend Lucius, only I wrote it before I ever even discovered who Seneca was.
To manage his asthma he didn't rely on witchcraft, or magic, or prayer, nor did he rely on remedies based on some poppycock superstitions or false logic. The way he learned to cope with his disease was by eating well, staying in shape, and by having many friends, diverting your mind so you don't think about the pains in your life. He generally wrote about the importance of relaxing and soothing your mind to remedy pain or dyspnea or any physical ailment. Today we refer to this as relaxation exercises.

He wrote that to think about the misery you put up with in the past, or to fear the future is senseless and will only increase your anxiety and make your disease and your life even worse; that fear and anxiety will only bring on an attack of "gasping for breath" or catarrh. (1)

He said, "'I am suffering from pain,' you may say.  'Well, does it stop your suffering it if you endure it in a womanish fashion" (1)

He continued, "Plus there are men who have suffered greater sufferings than you have and survived.  In this way you should consider yourself fortunate.  You could have something worse, like "having your arms stretched on a rack or burnt alive... There have been men who have undergone these experiences and never uttered a groan... Surely pain is something you will want to smile at after this." (10

"But my illness has taken me away from my duties and won't allow me to achieve anything," he wrote as another example of a common complaint of the suffering. (1)

He said:

"It is your body, not your mind as well, that is in the grip of ill health.  Hence it may slow the feet of a runner and make the hands of a smith or cobbler less efficient, but if your mind is by habit of an active turn you may still give instruction and advice, listen and learn, inquire and remember.  Besides, if you meet sickness in a sensible manner, do you really think you are achieving nothing?  You will be demonstrating that even when one cannot always beat it one can always bear an illness.  There is room for heroism, I assure you, in bed as anywhere else.  War and the battle-front are not the only spheres in which proof is to be had of a spirited and fearless character:  a person's bravery is no less evident under the bed-clothes. There is something it lies open to you to achieve, and that is making the fight with illness a good one.  If its threats or importunities leave you quite unmoved, you are sending others a signal example.  How much scope there would be for renown if whenever we were sick we had an audience of spectators!  Be your own spectator anyway, your own applauding audience." (1)

In essence, he is saying that you are alive and therefore you have a gift to offer to the world if you see it and if you use it.  Your job is to bring yourself up, rise up, and make something of what you have left in life.  Use what is not ailing you: your brain, your ability to speak or listen, your ability to read and write and to communicate ideas. 

The benefits I wrote about are perspective on life and an appreciation for every breath, a sense of vulnerability in that you know that you will not live forever and that you must get what you can out of life, and give what you can give while you are here.  You know that you might die tomorrow, so you live forever today.  You touch as many people as you can.  You read instead of doing things that might trigger your asthma. You write and communicate what you learn.  And, in this way, you are in effect making a difference in the world with the faculties you have left.

He said:

"Moreover, even if death is on the way with a summons for him, though it comes all too early, though it cut him off in the prime of his life, he has experienced every reward that the very longest life can offer, having gained extensive knowledge of the world we live in, having learnt that time adds nothing to the finer things in life.  Whereas any life must needs seem short to people who measure it in terms of pleasure which through their empty nature are incapable of completeness." (1)

We must never let the things that ail us set us back.  We must continue on and give what we can in this life.

References:  

1. Campbell, Robin, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, "Letters from a Stoic: Epistulae morales ad Lucilium, " Penguin, 1969, letter LXXVII.

62 B.C.: Seneca the asthma philosopher

 Sculpture of Seneca by Puerta de Almodóvar in Córdoba, Spain

During the last three years of his life, Seneca the Younger spent much of his time writing down his thoughts about the world around him, including his thoughts about asthma and how it impacted his life.  He also gave his advice to other people suffering from this disease.

He said:

"What in fact makes people who are morally unenlightened by the experience of physical distress is their failure to acquire the habit of contentment with the spirit. They have instead been preoccupied by the body... so do not go out of your way to make your troubles any more tiresome than they are and burden yourself with fretting." 

Like the writings of Pliney the Elder, Seneca's writings became well read, and Seneca became one of the most well known philosophers.  In one of his letters to Lucilius, a friend and correspondent of Seneca's, Seneca provided a description of asthma, although he doesn't use the term asthma.

From his 54th letter to his friend Lucius (who also had asthma and catarrh), we get Seneca's description of asthma from "On Asthma and Death" as translated by Richard M. Gummere:

My ill health had allowed me a long furlough, when suddenly it resumed the attack. "what kind of ill-health?" you say. And you surely have a right to ask; for it is true that no kind is unknown to me. But I have been consigned, so to speak, to one special ailment. I do not know why I should call it by its Greek name; for it is well enough described as "shortness of breath." It's attack is of very brief duration, like that of a squall at sea; it usually ends within an hour. Who indeed could breathe his last for long? I have passed through all the ills and dangers of the flesh; but nothing seems to me more troublesome than this. And naturally so; for anything else may be called illness; but this is a sort of continued 'last gasp.' Hence physicians call it 'practising how to die." For some day the breath will succeed in doing what it has so often essayed (breath will succeed in doing what it is supposed to do). (2, page 361)

In letter 65 he wrote about his catarrh and the catarrh of his friend Lucius (1):

"I am all the more sorry to hear about your constant catarrh, and the spells of feverishness that go with it when it becomes protracted to the point of being chronic, because this kind of ill health is something I have experienced myself. In its early stages I refused to let it bother me, being still young enough to adapt a defiant attitude to sickness and put up with hardships, but eventually I succumbed to it altogether. Reduced to a state of complete emaciation, I had arrived at a point where the catahhral discharges were virtually carrying me away with them altogether. On many an occasion I felt the urge to cut my life short there and then, and was only held back by the thoughts of my father who had been the kindest of fathers to me and was then in his old age. Having in mind now how bravely I was capable of bearing the loss, I commanded myself to live. There are times when even to live an act of bravery." (1)

This was probably saying a lot back then, because I can imagine living in a state of shortness of breath.  And I can imagine this coupled with the misery of allergies on top of that.

Yet I cannot imagine what those two ailments would be like when there was no cure and no remedy that really provided any relief.  It must have been pure hell to live like that.  I can understand how he might be compelled to think about just ending the misery right "there and then."

Yet life is special, and there are few who get to enjoy this special gift.  Seneca realized this.  He used his father to provide himself the courage to go on. 

In letter 65 he described to his friend Lucius what he did to survive the attacks of asthma and catarrh (1). 

"Let me tell you the things that provided me consolation in those days, telling you to begin with that the thoughts which brought me this peace of mind had all the effects of medical treatment. Comforting thoughts contribute to a person's cure; anything which raises his spirit benefits him physically as well. It was my Stoic studies that really saved me. For the fact I was able to leave my bed and was restored to health I give the credit to philosophy. I owe her -- and it is the least of my obligations to her -- my life. But my friends also made a considerable contribution to my health. I found a great deal of relief in their cheering remarks, in the hours they spent at my bedside and in their conversations with me. There is nothing, my good Lucius, quite like the devotion of one's friends for supporting one in illness and restoring one to health, and for dispelling one's anticipation of dread and death. I even came to feel that I could not really die when these were the people I would leave surviving me, or perhaps I should say I came to think I would continue to live because of them, if not among them; for it seemed to me that in death I would not be passing on my spirit to them. These things gave me the willingness to help my own recovery and endure all the pain. It is quite pathetic, after all, if one has put the will to die behind one, to be without the will to life.

Another remedy he later adds...

"is to turn your mind to other thoughts and in that way get away from your suffering. Call to mind things which you have done that have been upright and courteous; run over in your mind the finest parts that have been played. And cast your memory over the things you have most admired."

No potions.  No magic.  No herbs.  Seneca might have been one of the first asthma experts to recommend, mainly due to his own experiences, the importance of relaxing to control your asthma.

"There then are your remedies," he said.

Click here for more asthma history.

References:

1. Campbell, Robin, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, "Letters from a Stoic: Epistulae morales ad Lucilium, " Penguin, 1969, letter LXXVII.
2. Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, "Seneca Ad Lucilium epistulae morales: Books I-LXI," translated by Richard M. Gummere, 1917, "The Epistles of Seneca," letter LIV "On Asthma and Death," New York, London, William Heinemann, G.P. Putnam's Sons, pages 361-363

RT Cave Facebook Page
RT Cave on Twitter

4 B.C. to 65 A.D.: Seneca learns to cope with asthma

Seneca (4 B.C. to 65 A.D.)

I wasn't expecting this, although as I started reading the works of Seneca the Younger a tingle rushed up my spine: he was describing exactly how I felt when I was suffered from asthma.   It was one of those "Wow! moments, as though I had a special connection with this guy who lived more than 2,000 years before me.

He said:

"My own advice to you -- and not only in the present illness but in your life as well -- is this: refuse to let the thought of death bother you: nothing is grim when we have escaped that fear."

In fact, even before I read Seneca, I wrote an article called "The Seven Benefits of Asthma," and "Seven Ways Asthma Benefited My Life."  It was neat to learn that someone who suffered from asthma so many years before me came to some of the same conclusions that I did: that suffering from a disease can actually be a blessing.

Seneca the Younger was another fellow asthmatic who walked the Earth while Jesus did.  Seneca is by far my favorite historical asthmatic, mainly due to his vivid descriptions of what it was like living with this disease 2,000 years ago when treatment for it was basically a crapshoot.

He was born in Greece but was a Roman at heart.  He lived from 4. B.C. to 65 A.D. and, like Pliney the Elder, he chose to use "difficulty of breathing" rather than the Greek term asthma.  He was a vivid -- very vivid -- writer through much of his life, and he wrote about his asthma because his asthma pretty much set the course of his life -- much like myself.

Robin Campbell, in his 1969 book, "Letters from a Stoic: Epistulae morales ad Lucilium," wrote that Seneca was born in Cordoba and lived while Jesus walked the Earth.  He suffered from "severely ill health, particularly asthma," throughout his life."

Mark Jackson, in his book, "Asthma: The Biography," explained that Seneca spent several years in the drier climate of Egypt during his childhood. He also suffered from chronic catarrh, which is a description in many older books to describe the symptoms inflammation of tissues lining the respiratory tract (mainly the nose) resulting in increased secretions. We now call it hay fever, nasal allergies, or rhinitis.
He paid careful attention to his diet, and was a teetotaler. He was likewise a Stoic, in that he believed there was no life after death, and his time in this life was all that he had. He studied law, and later became a Senator.

Campbell further explained that in 37 A.D when Caligula succeeded Tiberius as Roman Emperor, Seneca had worked his way to leading speaker of the Senate, and the emperor was so jealous of him that he called for Seneca to be executed. Yet Seneca was rescued by a woman close to the throne who said Seneca was "suffering from tuberculosis and it would not be long before he died."

It's difficult to know whether Seneca had tuberculosis or asthma, although many historians believe he had neither: they think he had cardiac asthma, which is heart failure.

Seneca was expelled from Rome for eight years for committing adultery. 

Later, in 49 A.D. Seneca was recalled to Rome and became tutor to a boy named Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, who later became the emperor Nero.  This was about the same time Alexander the Great was being tutored by Aristotle.

Ironically, Nero had an older brother named Brittanicus who many think had an allergy to horses, which made him unable to do many of the things necessary of a king, making him inferior to his younger brother.  So, when Claudius died in 54 A.D., Nero succeeded Brittanicus to the throne.  Some suspected Seneca as the killer, although there was never any proof of this found.

One would think that with an instructor with allergies and asthma, and a brother with the same maladies, that Nero would have had empathy for his brother.  Yet this was not the case, as it's believed Nero had Brittanicus poisoned to death.

Seneca is mentioned in the writings of Pliney the Elder, and it wasn't until the last three years of his life that Seneca dedicated to philosophy and writing full time.  In 65 A.D. a plot to kill the emperor Nero was uncovered and this resulted in the deaths of many close to the king. 

Seneca was asked to commit suicide, and he did.  It ended up for Seneca being a long and painful death by suffocation from fumes and bleeding.  Tomorrow I will delve into the interesting thoughts of Seneca regarding life with asthma.

RT Cave Facebook Page
RT Cave on Twitter