The Medical Marketplace • 103from their mansion across the river from plague-ridden Westminster. She
had just received a letter from Symon Patrick, who had buried sixteen vic-
tims of the plague during the past week, five times the weekly burials from all
causes before this visitation. He was discussing, in his roundabout fashion,
ways they could protect themselves from the plague—he in the infected cap-
ital and she just off the main road that connected London to the Essex coun-
tryside.
“There is some danger no doubt in this place,” he wrote from his Covent
Garden lodgings. “But I am not in any feare, which will make the danger
lesse.” Symon and Elizabeth were writing letters once or twice a week. Writ-
ing to her helped him relax after preparing his Sunday sermon and again af-
ter the long midweek services the king had mandated “so long as it pleaseth
God to visit the land with the pestilence.” The pastor had just finished writ-
ing a homily on the Ninety-first Psalm. “It is apparent from what physicians
write concerning preservatives against this pestilential disease,” Patrick ad-
ded, “that they can prescribe nothing like trust in God, which contains the
virtues of them all. It expels fear [and] calms the passions and stops the rage
of the boiling in the blood.”^13
But no one was free of worry at this time. Reverend Patrick’s relative med-
ical sophistication might have made him more anxious about being alone in
the daytime and going out into the distempered air at night to pray at inter-
ments. As a precaution, he had brought in a supply of medicaments, which
distinguished him from Reverend Josselin. “I forgot to tell you,” Symon in-
formed Elizabeth, “that instead of the plague drink you writ of they have
sent me plague water.” The mix-up does not seem to have bothered him. The
new plague water, he informed her, “is distilled and nothing like what I had
before; but never trouble them to send mee more.” To Elizabeth’s worries he
responded reassuringly: “Dr. Michael Thwayte directed me to make and
drink presently of London treacle and Lady Allen’s water.” Then he ad-
mitted the truth: “I bought both presently, but forgot still to mix them: only
now and then I take a little treacle.”
Patrick paid more attention to diet than to drugs. He knew the classic reg-
imen, from choosing the right meat and drink to maintaining a calm disposi-
tion and regular evacuation, including semen. He referred offhandedly to sex,
teasing Elizabeth about an imaginary mistress. Symon was more concerned
about their emotions, especially hers. The doctors said emotional stress could
invite the infection and maybe even bring it on by unbalancing the humors.
His favorite emotional antidote was his trust in God, but there was a close
second. Elizabeth’s love for him, he declared, would keep him alive by making