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Paralysis. The Venerable Bede prescribed a cure. ‘Scarify the neck after the setting of the sun and silently pour the blood into running water. After that, spit three times, then say: “Have thou this unheal and depart with it.”’

Paralysis. According to Wikipedia, defined by the loss of voluntary movement or motor function. A late Old English word, via Latin from Greek paralusis, from paraluesthai ‘be disabled at the side’, from para ‘beside’ + luein ‘loosen’. A term used figuratively from 1813.

Paralysis. According to the Egyptian physician Imhotep, 3,000 to 2,500 years BC: ‘If thou examinest a man having a dislocation in a vertebra of his neck, shouldst thou find him unconscious of his two arms and his two legs on account of it (and) urine drips from his member without his knowing it, his flesh has received wind, his two eyes are bloodshot … he has an emissio seminis which befalls his phallus, thou shouldst say concerning him, “an ailment not to be cured”.’ Give or take the phallus, old Imhotep was spot on.