The Great Plague. The Story of London\'s Most Deadly Year

104 • Confusion

him long for it. He called this love between them a strong antidote. “In what
dispensary did you find it? Its a medicine of your owne making.”^14

Prescribing Physick

To Break the tumour [bubo]:Take a great onion, hollow it, put into it a fig, rue cut

small, a dram of Venice treacle; put it in a wet paper, and roast it in embers; apply

it hot unto the tumour.

To D ra w :When it is broken, to draw and heal it, take the yoke of an egg, one

ounce of honey of roses, turpentine one ounce, wheat flour a little, London treacle

a dram and a half; mix these well, spread it upon leather. Change [the poltice]

twice a day.

—College of Physicians,Certain Necessary Directions for

the Prevention and Cure of the Plague, 1665

Physicians had long employed bleeding, sweating, purging, and vomiting to

treat a wide range of physical ailments including fevers.^15 Apothecaries had
special juleps for thirst and opiates for sleep; these concoctions could relieve
much of the misery of a plague patient as he prepared his mind and soul for
death. Surgeons were in demand with their lancets or long-handled cau-

teries; they knew how to draw out the poison from a bubo after softening it
with a plaster. “You will find it less cost, paine, or trouble to go to a chyrur-
geon [surgeon] to make an issue,” it was claimed, “than to have him come to
you to dress a carbuncle.”^16

Times were changing. The College of Physicians’ new plague manual cau-
tioned its members not to use bleeding, purging, or vomiting as therapies for
plague. Too many patients died afterward from loss of blood or a weakened
condition. But old habits die hard. After all, ancient Egyptians and Greeks

had found bleeding to be therapeutic, and so did their European successors.^17
Dr. Thomas Sydenham mixed the old ways (bloodletting and sweating)
with the new (aggressively attacking an abnormality with a like quality). A
caregiver, he advised, should rely on “heating medicines even though plague

is an inflammatory disease.” By producing a sweat, he continued, the body
would exhale the infectious particles from the blood. If this failed and the
blood became more inflamed with heat, bleeding would be in order. If the
patient’s pain became unbearable, the doctor resorted to a favorite tonic used

by the chemical physicians—opium. If all these devices failed, he rec-
ommended relying on nature’s therapeutic powers and hoping for the best.