Among the ancient Slavs, a number of diseases belonged to the category of shameful ones. Some of them were considered a punishment that a person received for sins, others - a consequence of an immoral lifestyle, non-observance of bodily and spiritual purity, indulgence of their base desires.
Diseases from dirt
In Russia, people were very attentive to the issues of personal hygiene, they often went to the bathhouse, where they steamed for a long time, expelling bodily and mental ailments. Any ailment resulting from poor personal hygiene was considered shameful. These included scabies, all kinds of eczema, erysipelas and other skin diseases.
In view of the underdevelopment of medicine, the Slavs completely in vain attributed illnesses of nervous, viral or some other origin to such shameful diseases. Any marks on human skin in the form of ulceration, purulent wounds and suspicious swelling caused deep disgust and branded. In Russia, impeccably clean skin was highly valued and considered beautiful.
Leprosy
A special place in the list of shameful diseases was occupied by leprosy, or leprosy. People, suffering from this disease, tried to bypass tenth roads. Leprosy was considered highly contagious and shameful. People infected with it were driven out of the villages and doomed to wandering. Usually they formed their small settlements in remote areas, where they lived side by side with the same unfortunate doomed.
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If a patient with leprosy approached an ordinary settlement, he had to notify in advance of his approach by striking a wooden mallet. Usually such patients were doomed to miserable vegetation and often died of hunger. Nobody wanted to approach them even to throw a crumb of bread.
Venereal diseases
Sexually transmitted diseases were considered the product of the licentiousness of the flesh and a dissolute lifestyle, because of which they were severely stigmatized. These ailments were considered so shameful that it was even indecent to talk about them. The topic of sexually transmitted diseases was strictly taboo, and people who had the misfortune to get sick with such a disease were left alone with their problems. For help, they quietly ran to the healers, but all this happened very secretly, almost under the cover of night.
Infertility
Male and especially female sterility was not only a great misfortune for a person, but also a rather shameful fact. The barren woman was called "a barren flower" and was treated rather scornfully, as if she had not fulfilled her main purpose.
Alcoholism
Extremely negative attitude in Russia and unrestrained drunkenness. When it became known about a person that he had “drunk himself to death,” to delirium tremens, and laid hands on himself in this state, this news fell like a black shadow on the entire family of the deceased. Relatives could only mention the death of drunkenness by blushing, because this fact was a real shame.