320 • Notes to Pages 101–105tury,”Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society,n.s., 6 ( 1896 – 98 ): 207 – 21. Her plague
recipe is described below, n. 20.
10. Today’s doctors very likely have medicines with roots in the distant past. At Los
Angeles County Hospital, there are boxes of live leeches for “fevers of unknown origin.”
11. Cocke,Kitchin Physick, 33. In 1660 , the nephew of a prominent London physician
excused his late repayment of a loan by saying: “I have transgressed in not doeing it
sooner, but desire your pardon. It hath pleased God to visit me with sickness.” The
nephew and uncle assumed that God’s presence had played a role in the illness and in
the young city man’s return to health and prosperity. Edmund Thomas to Francis Glis-
son, Feb. 27 , 1660 , BL, Sloane MS 2251 , fol. 88. On the connections between religion
and medicine, see Peter Elmer, “Medicine, Religion, and the Puritan Revolution,” in
Roger French and Andrew Wear, eds.,The Medical Revolution of the Seventeenth Cen-
tury(Cambridge, 1989 ), 10 – 45 , and above, ch. 3 ,n. 28.
12. Josselin,Diary, 519 , entry for July 2. Josselin’s medical views are summarized in
Lucinda McCray Beier,Sufferers and Healers: The Experience of Illness in Seventeenth-
Century England(London, 1987 ).
13. Symon Patrick to Elizabeth Gauden at Burntwood [Brentwood], Essex, Aug. 9 ,
1665 , in Patrick,Works, 9 : 571 – 73 ;A Consolatory Discourse Persuading to a Cheerful trust in
God in these times of Trouble and Dangerand “Brief Account of My Life,” in ibid., 3 : 671 ,
9 : 443.
14. S. Patrick to E. Gauden, Sept. 22 , 28 , 30 , in ibid., 9 : 576 – 78 , 582 – 85.
15 .See Dr. Edmund King, “Medical receipts and cases, 1664 – 1686 ,” BL, Sloane MS
1588 , esp. fols. 99 , 275 , 285 , including notes against the plague and against the pestilence
and prevention against the contagion.
16. William Kemp,A Brief Treatise of the Pestilence(London, 1665 ), quoted in The Pest
Anatomized, 6.
17. London College of Physicians,Certain Necessary Directions for the Prevention and
Cure of the Plague(London, 1665 ), 49. See Lester S. King, “Reflections on Blood-Let-
ting,” in Medical Thinking: A Historical Preface(Princeton, 1982 ), ch. 11. Reducing the
blood volume can temporarily relieve a variety of conditions, ranging from the strain on
the heart in lobar pneumonia to high blood pressure accompanied by a severe headache.
18. An excellent overview of drugs for plague is “Remedies,” in Wear,Knowledge and
Practice,ch. 2. On the history of theriac as adapted for plague, see The Pest Anatomized,
8 – 9.
19. See the Newes,June 3 , July 5.
20. “A Booke of Divers Receipts,” WIL Western MS 1322 , fol. 30. Cf. the comment
by Lady Luckyn on her family’s plague recipe, which she deemed good also against “the
swetting sicknes, surffits, mesels and small poxe. Kepe this above all medsons and use as
follows: If you think your self infected, each morning and evening take a large sponfull
at a time luke warm. If not infected, each morning take one sponfull of itt. Nex[t] under
God, trust to this remedy, if the hart be not clere mortyfid[e] and drowned with ye poi-
son so long before the drink.” Her recipe reads: “Take 3 pints of the best Malmsey ore
Sake [wine], Boyle therin one handful of Rue, as much Sage till one pint is boyled away.