The Doctors Stumble• 141rious malady might involve some corrupting or putrefaction of an individ-
ual’s internal humors, its origins seemed to be external because the disease
struck down citizens regardless of their different constitutions. Hodges took
out his frustration with academic medicine’s limited understanding of plague
by criticizing popular remedies. It irritated his professional pride to hear
people saying that exposure to the French disease (syphilis) protected against
the plague. What an antidote! He wondered why one would ever endanger
body and soul with such recklessness.
Caught between imperfect medical theory and dubious popular cures, Na-
thaniel Hodges relied on his traditional training and personal instincts as he
treated his plague patients. “I think it not amiss to recite the means which I
used to preserve my self from the Infection during the course of my business
among the sick,” he later recalled. Rising early in the morning, Hodges
placed a nutmeg in his mouth as a precaution, and in the course of two or
three hours saw all of the patients who crowded into the waiting room of his
house.^7 He paused for breakfast and then went out to see the housebound.
To ward off the infection, he brought along chafing dishes with coals. He ig-
nited them and placed them at the entryway, before the windows, and under
the beds if there was enough space. Quicklime, thrown onto the coals along
with various spices and herbs, produced a penetrating steam “to destroy the
efficacy of the pestilential miasmata.”
On his rounds, Hodges held lozenges in his mouth and took care not to
go into sickrooms when he was sweating or short of breath, thinking his re-
sistance might be low. By midday he needed to fortify himself before seeing
any more infected patients, and he returned home for a glass of sack “to
warm the stomach, refresh the spirits, and dissipate any beginning Lodg-
ment of the Infection.” Then he partook of a generous amount of boiled
meat with pickles, which he felt helped prevent the distemper, before resum-
ing work. “I had always many persons come for advice,” he recalled. “As soon
as I could dispatch them I again visited [patients] until 8 or 9 at night.”
Drawing on Galenic therapy, Hodges advocated opening the pores and
calming the spirits of his plague patients with liquors and soporifics to
achieve a balance of the humors, replacing their “dis-ease” with a normal
healthy “ease.” He also prescribed a moderate regimen of purgatives and
sweating to rid the body of any impurities. He held back from bleeding
someone with the plague, however, heeding the College of Physicians’ warn-
ing that bleeding was dangerous for a constitution weakened by the infection.
West of Hodges’ neighborhood, in the shadow of Saint Paul’s cathedral,
the poor of Saint Gregory’s parish huddled in ramshackle rental properties