The Medical Marketplace • 105The plague drug of choice was theriac, a mixture of viper’s flesh, garlic,
rue, vinegar, walnuts, onion, and (to leave nothing to chance) opium. For the
very poor an onion could be applied directly to a plague sore to draw out the
venom. The ancients of Alexandria and Rome had discovered the perfect an-
tidote to plague poison: viper’s flesh, “like attracting like.”^18 They tested it on
criminals with apparent success, and it took on a mythic reputation.
Chemists on the canals of Venice developed their own theriac plague
water, which was widely merchandised as Venice treacle. The English rushed
into the market with a variation, London treacle. All the middling and
upper-class people staying in London seemed to have a supply, and those
who fled took it with them. For increased marketability, plague waters and
powders were named after famous users like Sir Walter Raleigh and were ad-
vertised with grandiose claims in Roger L’Estrange’s semiweekly newssheets.
The duchess of Kent’s powder was “in the hands of a Person of Quality that
had the honor to wait upon the said countess until her death” (seemingly a
counterproductive statement).
Exclusive shops enticed the well-to-do purchasing public. Dr. Waldron’s
electuary against the plague was sold by Richard Loundes at the White Lion
near the little north door of Saint Paul’s cathedral, at Mr. Magnes’ shop in
Russell Street, Covent Garden, and at Mistress Blundel’s in Westminster
Hall under the Court of Common Pleas—“and nowhere else.” There were
no better locations to reach the richer sort. Incidentally, all three retailers
were booksellers. The latest plague literature could be purchased in tandem
with the newest edition of a guide to healthy eating,The Art of Cookery.^19
Families’ all-purpose “receipt” books often contained cures for plague and
other medical disasters. “Keep this above all worldly treasure and under God
trust it,” wrote the proud possessor of a plague recipe, “for there never was
man, woman nor childe that ever this disceived if it were taken in time.” It
was also good for smallpox, purple fever, measles, and surfeit.^20
It was now two months after Samuel Pepys had first run across people
sharing their knowledge of plague remedies at London’s Great Coffee House
in May, “some saying one thing, some another.” His own plague remedies in-
cluded some plague waters. When abroad he cheerfully imbibed those his
guests offered. The sight of red crosses on the doors in Drury Lane sent him
scurrying for another kind of prophylactic: “It put me into an evil conception
of myself and my [foul] smell, so that I was forced to buy some roll-tobacco
to smell and chaw—which take away the apprehension.” He had no doubt
heard the legend that tobacconists did not die from the pestilence. School-
boys at Eton that summer were caned if they missed their daily smoke before