112 • Confusiontheory. To be sure, there were some outright charlatans this summer, deliber-
ately deluding the frightened and gullible trapped inside the capital city. A
remarkable con story from this terrible time bears repeating. A London con-
stable caught four thieves robbing a pestilential corpse in a London street
and asked why they weren’t afraid of contagion. They replied that their pro-
tection came from rubbing themselves with vinegar mixed with various
herbs, a sure prophylactic. Word of this conversation spread quickly and in a
few days London apothecaries announced the latest curative for plague,
“Four Thieves Vinegar.” It enjoyed a brisk sale and was marketed long after
the plague disappeared.^41
There is another perspective on this manipulation of the market. During
one of his walks in an infected section of town, John Allin noticed people
wearing amulets. His curiosity drew him closer. Dr. Cocke, academic physi-
cian that he was, would have nothing to do with these “deleterious and
poisonous things.” But Allin studied the effect of the toad poison in these
amulets. “Upon any infection invadeing from time to time,” he reported tri-
umphantly to his friends in the country, they raise a blister, “which a plaister
heales, and so they are well.” Perhaps he might “get the true preparation of
it,” he told Philip Fryth, hardly able to contain himself. If successful, he
promised to send a sample in the mail.^42