Pandemic then and now (part 2)...

My current series of historical novels is set in the middle of the 14th century, a period (in)famous for its devastating plague. The events of the first novel occur just after the Black Death has passed on, and so don’t concern the plague itself but rather its consequences for a community that lost so many of its members. But I have recently published the fourth novel in the series, which, sadly, is at least partly “about” plague, which returned to England in 1361 (and many times thereafter).

I was still writing this fourth novel when the world was plunged into chaos by the arrival of COVID-19. Although it was unsettling writing about a pandemic when we were in the midst of one, it did give me food for thought, comparing the two events.

My last post on The History Girls blog, in May, related something of medieval people’s understanding of the reasons for the plague, focussing on the idea that “lewd” fashion, and indeed lewdness in general, might be responsible.

In today’s post, though, for what I think may be my last on The History Girls concerning plague, I thought I’d talk a little more about how medieval people responded to plague. It’s particularly interesting because there are a few fascinating parallels with our own responses to the 2020 pandemic.

In the 14th century, people had some curious (to us) notions about the causes of the disease. Death was of course everyday – accidents were commonplace, illnesses mostly incurable, and even untreatable, life generally subject to manifold risk. Medieval people had a tendency to credit adversity of any kind, be it the loss of a child, dead cows, a bad harvest, or the failure of the butter to churn, to God’s will or the Devil’s work.

Part of a mural in a church in Hrastovlje, Slovenia, painted at the end of the 15th century,

showing people of every rank and station being led by grinning skeletons towards a grave. 

National Gallery of Slovenia. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

We know well enough the medieval notion that the coming of the Black Death, or indeed any disaster, was the result of mankind’s sin. That was what the Church promulgated. However, even if this was the generally accepted view, ther were scientific explanations too. Various complicated theories about the movements of the planets were proposed, and also ideas that miasma, or foul air, was to blame. Foul air was thought to be a cause of disease in general, and plague was no different.

But, if medieval people had some notions of the cause of the disease (even if they were wrong), I imagine it was far trickier for them to work out how to deal with it.

Isolation, keeping oneself to oneself generally, was certainly understood. The value of social distancing, as we now call it, was recognised. The premise for Boccaccio’s Decameron (completed in 1353) is the isolation of a group of young people who flee Florence to escape the plague. And a 14th century French physician, Jean Jacmé, wrote in a treatise on the plague:

“In pestilence time nobody should stand in a great press of people because some man among them may be infected” *

So close contact with a victim was to be avoided. People did go into “lockdown”, confining themselves and their families to their homes, only going out “if absolutely necessary”, presumably to fetch water, buy food, tend to their animals or manage their land.

But Doctor Jacmé had some other familiar-sounding advice. He advocated the washing of hands “oft times in the day”*, though he recommended using water and vinegar, rather than soap.

Touch, then, was certainly to be avoided, but another physician posited that looking into a plague victim’s eyes was also risky, on the grounds that disease could be transmitted via the “airy spirit leaving the eyes of the sick man”*, which does seem somewhat less than plausible. But something much more familiar is avoiding a victim’s “foul air” – the emissions resulting from coughing or even breathing. The “plague doctor” bird beak masks of later centuries hadn’t yet been invented, but I can well imagine that those who attended victims might have covered their nose and mouth.

The 17th century equivalent of a “hazmat” suit?

Though these sorts of beak masks weren’t used in the 14th century.

(Copper engraving of Doctor Schnabel (Dr. Beak), a plague doctor in 17th century Rome.

Published by Paul Fürst (1608–1666) who was perhaps also the engraver. Public domain.)

What medieval people didn’t seem to know about, for I have seen no reference to it in the sources I have been reading, was the role of rats and fleas. Rats have long been implicated in the spread of plague, though some scientists now think the speed of spread was, in practice, too rapid and too far for transmission by rat flea alone to be viable. Others have it that the rat fleas jumped host to people, and then human fleas and body lice were infected, making it easier for rapid people-to-people transmission. Yet the situation is unclear. The World Health Organisation, speaking of the present time, says, “human to human transmission of bubonic plague is rare”. Yet, the 1361 outbreak was in the summer months, in which bubonic, as opposed to pneumonic, plague, was in principle more common. Whichever it was, it spread very quickly, and was undoubtedly hideous and terrifying.

Perhaps not quite the culprit he’s been made out to be? But not this cute either!

(Etching by W. S. Howitt, 1808. Wellcome Library, London. http://wellcomeimages.org. Public domain.)

And of course doctors in the 14th century really didn’t know how to treat the disease, though some undoubtedly thought they did. Some would probably have tried their favourite cure-all, blood-letting, or applied a variety of substances to the suffering body, from herbs and vinegar, to urine and excrement, none of which were beneficial. In my novel, I have a barber-surgeon lancing the buboes, a practice that wasn’t necessarily carried out in the 1300s, though it was a couple of centuries later. But I can imagine eager medieval surgeons trying various methods to save their patients, just as the university-trained physicians ceaselessly sought answers in the heavens. And, even in the 14th century, catching plague wasn’t absolutely a death sentence, for some people clearly did survive it – even people who had been close to, or even nursed, victims.

It’s been a strange year for all of us, and of course it’s not over yet. When I embarked upon writing the fourth novel, back in 2019, I could never have imagined how close to home the events I wrote about might seem. As the 2020 pandemic took off, I recoiled a little at that “closeness”. Yet, since then, I have welcomed the opportunity once more to compare experiences then and now, finding, as so often, that, despite the centuries between us, there is much that we share.

* Quotes are from The Black Death, translated and edited by Rosemary Horrox. If you’d like to read more about plague in the 14th century, I really do recommend it, for it has a wealth of fascinating detail, and uses contemporary texts to reveal the thinking of the time.

Pandemic then and now... by Carolyn Hughes

My series of historical novels is set in the middle of the 14th century, a period (in)famous for its devastating plague. The first novel wasn’t actually about the Black Death, but about its aftermath and the social consequences for a community that lost between a third and a half of its population.

Now, however, I’m writing the fourth novel in the series and, unfortunately, it is at least partly “about” plague, for the pandemic returned to England in 1361. As a result, right now I’m in the rather curious, and admittedly somewhat uncomfortable, position of writing about a pandemic whilst living through one. I suppose I could have steered the story away from such ghastly happenings, but I planned the book’s storyline long before we’d even heard of COVID-19, and I’m disinclined to ditch a narrative I’ve been working on for a year… For a while I was too unsettled and distracted by the unfolding present-day disaster to even think about the “plague” chapters, let alone write them, but recently I’ve got a grip and am at last making some progress.

But, because I’ve had to think about plague all over again, I’ve also been rereading some of the textbooks on medieval plague, to refresh my understanding about what medieval people thought and felt about it, and how they responded to and dealt with it.

The way COVID-19 has spread so fast and so easily is frightening enough, but doctors and scientists do at least know what it is (they understand the nature of viruses), understand how it spreads (for example, coughing), have some idea of how to mitigate it (for example, isolation, ventilators), have found a way of testing for the disease and are hopefully well on the way to finding a vaccine.

Whereas in the 14th century, people had no idea what the disease actually was, or how it spread. The black rat and its fleas have always been implicated in the spread, but there is also a view that human fleas and lice might also have carried it from person to person, given the speed of the disease’s transmission. Of course, people then didn’t necessarily understand the role of fleas as vectors for disease, though it’s clear they did believe that close contact with a victim was to be avoided.

Perhaps not quite the culprit he’s been made out to be? But not this cute either!
(Etching by W. S. Howitt, 1808. Wellcome Library, London. http://wellcomeimages.org. Public domain.)

People did seem to understand the value of isolation as a way of avoiding plague although, practically and logistically, running away cannot have been easy or even feasible. But keeping oneself to oneself was certainly understood. Eyam in Derbyshire is famous for going into “lock-down” in 1665 after plague invaded the village (from fleas in a bolt of cloth apparently). But Boccaccio’s Decameron (completed in 1353) is based on the isolation premise, being a collection of stories told by a group of young men and women who fled Florence to a secluded villa in order to escape the Black Death.

A Tale from the Decameron by John William Waterhouse, 1916.
National Museums, Liverpool. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

In the 14th century, death was of course everyday – illnesses were mostly incurable, accidents commonplace, life generally subject to all manner of risk. Medieval people ascribed every mishap or disaster, be it the loss of a child, dead cows, a bad harvest, or the failure of the butter to churn, to either God’s will or the Devil’s work. So it was presumably entirely understandable, if terrifying, to be told that the coming of the plague was God’s punishment for man’s sin, for your sin. Especially when God was supposed to be merciful rather than vengeful.

This was what priests told their congregations. In September 1348, at the behest of the king, Edward III, a letter was sent from the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury to all the bishops in the southern counties, ordering them to arrange urgent prayers to be offered up against the plague. It is clear from the letter that the coming of the Great Mortality was seen as divine punishment for sin:

“Terrible is God towards the sons of men… Those whom he loves he censures and chastises… he punishes their shameful deeds in various ways… He…allows plagues, miserable famines, conflicts, wars and other forms of suffering to arise and uses them to terrify and torment men and so drive out their sins.” #

Letters were then sent by the bishops to every parish in their diocese, reiterating this assertion that the Great Mortality was God’s punishment for mankind’s sin, and urging priests and their parishioners to repent earnestly of their sins and beg God for His mercy. These words come from the bishop of Winchester’s letter to his clergy:

“…God often strikes us, to test our patience and justly punish us for our sins… it is not within the power of man to understand the divine plan… the most likely explanation is that human sensuality has now plumbed greater depths of evil, producing a multitude of sins which have provoked the divine anger, by a just judgement, to this revenge.” #

So, according to the bishop, it was “sensuality” that had provoked God’s especial anger…. And one particular aspect of sensuality that some held up as a prime cause of God’s anger was allegedly the fashion for clothing that was considered by some to be both outlandish and indecent.

In 1344, an English monk spoke of the “grotesque fashions of clothing” then current in England, and he upbraided the English for abandoning the “old, decent style of long full garments” for:

“clothes which are short, tight, impractical, slashed, every part laced, strapped or buttoned up.” #

A few years after the second outbreak of the plague in 1361, a chronicler associated the lewd style of clothing with the evil that would undoubtedly follow:

 “…the English…remained wedded to a crazy range of outlandish clothing without realising the evil which would come of it.” (From a chronicle of 1365) #

This chronicler was writing twenty years after the monk, so one presumes the “outlandish” clothing was still in vogue.

So, what was it like, this clothing? Indecency and impracticality, as well as frivolousness, seem to have been the main complaints. Here are a few examples from the 1365 chronicler describing men’s fashion:

“…full doublets, cut short to the loins” “…which failed to conceal…their private parts.”

“…particoloured and striped hose…which are called harlottes, and thus one ‘harlot’ serves another, as they go about with their loins uncovered.”

“…a long garment reaching to the ankles, [but] not opening in the front, as is proper for men, but laced up the side to the armhole in the style of women’s clothes, so that from the back their wearers look more like women than men.”

“…little hoods, tightly buttoned under the chin in the fashion of women…the liripipe ankle-length and slashed like a jester’s clothes.”

“They also possess shoes with pointed toes as long as a finger…more like devil’s talons than apparel for men…” #

The three images below give you some idea of very short doublets, and very pointed shoes (the chap on the right in the middle image). These are Italian men so maybe Englishmen’s clothes would have looked a little different but, from the criticisms above, one might deduce that the principles of style were much the same!

All these images are from the 14th century treatise on health Tacuinum sanitatis.

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Women of course didn’t escape censure – far from it. I think some members of the church were always very willing to find fault with the “daughters of Eve”…

As an example of women’s “lewd” clothing, the sideless surcoat became fashionable in the mid-14th century, a long, sleeveless overdress, with very large armholes, which revealed the fitted gown underneath. Some moralists abhorred the style, saying it drew unwarranted attention to the shape of the woman’s body, in a titillating way that would surely inflame men’s thoughts…

This image shows the style rather well, albeit she is very much a member of the nobility.

Miniature in the manuscript Chroniques de France ou de St. Denis, showing 

Maria of Brabant’s marriage with the French king Philip III.

British Library Royal MS 20 C VII, fol. 10. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Tight clothing does seem to have been the principal concern, and the monk in 1344 gives us another example of it:

“Women followed with the tides of fashion…even more eagerly, wearing clothes that were so tight that they wore a fox tail hanging down insider their skirts at the back, to hide their arses.” #

All these clothes were seen as signs of both lewdness and pride, for men and women alike, and the inevitable precursor to disaster. The monk predicted:

“The sin of pride manifested in this way must surely bring down misfortune in the future.” #

And the later chronicler said much the same, but brought all the other sins into the equation too:

“Because the people wantonly squander the gifts of God on…pride, lechery and greed – and all the rest of the deadly sins – it is only to be expected that the Lord’s vengeance will follow.” #

Clearly all the clothes in these illustrations were worn by the better off rather than peasants although, as some peasants and artisans became more prosperous, they too aspired to, and acquired, more fashionable clothes, which was even more deeply frowned upon. In the 1360s, sumptuary laws were brought in to curb this unseemly blurring of the social hierarchy, but this was presumably more about the upper classes wanting to maintain their fashionable distinction than worries about indecency…

But doesn’t it all seem rather odd – hilarious, even – that fashion was held responsible for the coming of the plague? Or even that immorality should take the blame? But the chroniclers were certainly moralists of one kind or another. And plague was perhaps a good pretext for them to criticise the masses for their bad behaviour. Not that most people, of course, would, or could, have read the chronicles, though I suppose they might have heard similar sentiments coming from the mouths of their priests. But I wonder to what extent the average Englishman or woman believed them? How I’d love to know…

# All texts are taken from The Black Death, translated and edited by Rosemary Horrox.

How to read a painting of the plague - Michelle Lovric

Today I should be flying from London to Venice. But obviously I won't be. And even if I could get there, I would be confined to my home, required to fill out a form if I wanted to cross the city to see my friends. I could not go to the library or to see an exhibition. I could not go to my local bar for a cappuccino. A Venetian friend told me yesterday morning, 'It's as if we've all been sent to jail.' 

I wish I was on my way, though. I'd love to see Venice without the crowds and most of all without the cruise ships: restored thereby to the beauty of a Canaletto painting. Without the cruise ships, the air of Venice must be safer to breathe, paradoxically, than it has been ever since the cruise ship blight fell on the city.

So, yes, beauty, but at what cost? 

Northern Italy is now paralysed not just by the corona virus but by fear of the corona virus.

This is not a new condition for la Serenissima. She is a city to some extent shaped by epidemics. As the crossroads and crucible of trade for centuries, Venice was also the place to which all major diseases eventually made a pilgrimage.

Plague, of course, was the sickness that terrified Venice above all others. When the disease struck in April 1464, the senate decreed that prayers should be said continuously in all the convents, monasteries and churches – for the plague was seen as a divine scourge. Two major plague outbreaks, in 1575 and 1630, killed off between a quarter and a third of the population each time. In 1575, one in two Venetians fell sick.

Historically, Venetians liked to portray their city as healthy in body and spirit. So it was a matter of scrupulous record that plague always arrived from the outside. The 1630 plague was said to have been imported via an ambassador of the Duke of Mantua when he was staying on the island of San Clemente. The ambassador seems to have contaminated a carpenter from Dorsoduro who happened to be working on San Clemente. That carpenter’s family were the first Venetian victims of this incarnation of the disease, one of the worst visitations on the city. (I noted this week that a Veneto politician has been keeping up the xenophobe blame tradition by asserting that corona virus was caused by Chinese people eating live mice. He himself is eating humble pie now, fortunately, and perhaps choking on it.)

Apart from plague, Venice was also subject to typhus, smallpox and cholera epidemics. Every ten years or so, sickness crippled the city. Sometimes, cruelly, two diseases arrived at once. Typhus and the plague were often twinned in the winter months. So it’s hard to write historical novels set in Venice without having your plots being contaminated by one illness or the other. Thus far, I’ve kept the plague fairly peripheral in my books, partly because it’s been done before and partly because the mechanics of the Venetian health measures were so detailed that they are laborious to explain and therefore somewhat fatal to novelistic pace. (Some things, like pageantry, are almost impossible to keep alive in words). However, I’ve needed to get closer to Venetian plague over the last couple of years when devising medical history tours of Venice for London’s Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, founded by Royal Charter in 1617 to promote the healing arts. (To this day, 85 percent of members are professionals in medical fields).

During last year’s visit, the Apothecaries were lucky enough to catch the end of Tintoretto’s 500th birthday party, magnificently celebrated in the Palazzo Ducale, the Accademia, various churches. The Scuola Medica at SS Giovanni e Paolo – always on our itineraries – hosted an excellent exhibition entitled Art, Faith and Medicine in Tintoretto’s Venice, which was also recorded in a superb book of essays by the same name (see left).

I saw the exhibition several times. From the first, I was captivated by a painting I’d never seen before. It’s by Domenico, son of the more famous Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto. Although Domenico’s work is generally decried as more workmanlike and of less combustible genius than his father’s, I think that this particular painting touches on greatness because of the simple pathos of its storytelling. You can read it like a book. And that's what I propose to do in this post.

Below is the painting, reproduced courtesy of the Web Gallery of Art (https://www.wga.hu).

The emotional message and story arc are very clear. Yet there is also so much going on here in the detail. Even its title is a short story in itself: Venice supplicating the Virgin Mary to intercede with Christ for the Cessation of the Plague, 1630–31.

This painting was commissioned for the congregation members at San Francesco della Vigna in Castello. Incidentally, at this church, the apothecary-priests made Four Thieves Vinegar, which they promoted as a cure for the plague. The apothecary shop there was so popular that the priests had to construct a separate entrance so that the customers did not disturb the prayers of the religious order. 

The striking central banner (above) reads: “Pray for me, I pray to your son for health, with the highest pity give aid to us against this cruel wound that devours us – placate His wrath, ceasing our sighs.” This banner separates the composition into two parts. Below, we see Venice personified, as usual, in a blonde, beautiful woman. She holds her arms open, showing both her considerable bosom (another Venetian trope) and her utter vulnerability. 

At her side is the lion of Venice’s patron saint, the healer Mark. The lion’s darkened face is contorted with grief. 

Above, in the heavens, the figure of Venezia finds her counterpoint in that of the Madonna, who in turn begs God to intercede on Venice’s behalf to close the ‘cruel wound’ of the plague. The city’s wound is of course spiritual and physical – she is haemorrhaging citizens; moreover, the plague manifests in the wounds known as buboes.

This painting shows also the practical side of mass death. Venice was supremely organised during episodes of plagues. Rules were laid down by the Magistrato alla Sanità and they worked all the way to street level. When it came to carrying away the dead, only licensed bearers, known as pizzegamorti, were allowed to handle the corpses. And so the painting fades to a miserable brown in the background behind the feminine personification of Venezia. Here you see the pizzegamorti at work, wearing their distinctive tunics marked with long red crosses. 

One of the essays in the exhibition's book explains how this painting developed. The modello or sketch (above) portrayed sprawled and splayed corpses piled up in the foreground. The final version replaced that grim sight with images of two female donors, whose beautiful faces (one of which is seen at left) show signs of graceful grief, echoing that of their patron saint. The essay theorizes that perhaps the donors had something to do with the sanitizing of the art.

Indeed other painters did not scruple to or were not prevented from showing the harrowing details of Venice in the grip of plague, as in this painting by Antonio Zanchi from the Scuola di San Rocco (courtesy of the Web Gallery of Art (https://www.wga.hu). It shows bodies being unloaded into boats and scenes of graphic distress and chaos that echo contemporary written accounts of the disaster.

The exhibition revealed that the words on the central banner of the Tintoretto painting were also adopted in litanies composed by Claudio Monteverdi who was the musical director of the Basilica San Marco in 1630, the time of this plague.

Paintings invoking Christ and the Madonna to intercede against disease were thought to have health-giving qualities. They were carried around the plague-plagued streets to sanitize them while such litanies were chanted by the priests. A miracle-working painting, the Madonna Nicopeia (looted from Constantinople in 1204), was borne around the piazza of San Marco in times of severe plague. It’s likely that Domenico Tintoretto’s painting was also paraded around the parish of San Francesco della Vigna. The shape and size of the painting makes this easy to imagine.

At that same time, the year of Domenico Tintoretto’s important painting, the city promised to build a votive church and establish a procession if the Madonna would intervene to save them from the plague.

The church of Santa Maria della Salute (Our Lady of Good Health) was the result. And in 1575, a similar prayer, this time to Christ the Redeemer, had already led to the construction of the church of the Redentore, or Redeemer on Giudecca. The festival of the Redentore is still celebrated today every July with a votive bridge for processions built in front of the church and massive fireworks at night.

When planning for the Apothecary tour last year, I was very excited at the prospect of showing them both the exhibition and the Domenico Tintoretto painting. So imagine my despair when I discovered that the Londoners would arrive in Venice one day after the closing of the exhibition. I couldn’t quite bear to deprive them of this painting. So I began to speak to people I know, working my way through a series of Venetian ‘no’s’ until I was directed by the eminent art historian Patricia Fortini Brown to Melissa Conn, the on-the-ground director of Save Venice, where she has thirty years’ experience overseeing the works of this American charity devoted to the restoration of buildings, monuments, manuscripts and more in the city. You can see Melissa here, talking about the restoration of Carpaccio’s Saint Ursula Cycle, also explaining modern philosophies and techniques of art conservation.

Save Venice had funded the Art, Faith and Medicine exhibition and the scholarship that was put into the book of essays, as well as restoring sixteen Tintoretto works in Venice. To my enormous relief, Melissa agreed to open the exhibition privately, two days after its official closure so that the London Apothecaries could witness the plague painting for themselves, the day before we set off in a boat to see for ourselves the mist-shrouded lazzaretto islands in the lagoon that once housed those afflicted with the plague or suspected of it.

Melissa not only arranged for us to see the painting, but accompanied us. As Managing Curator of the exhibition, not to mention a noted art historian, she was a font of wonderful insights into this picture, some of which I have recorded above.

So did this votive painting have effect? The 1630/1 plague did indeed dwindle. The sighs of the city ceased. Life returned to normal, for a while. 

In our current difficulties, it does not appear that anyone is commissioning any art, votive or otherwise, to represent a hope of redemption from the corona virus. If someone did so, I wonder what it would look like? A collage of selfies? An internet meme? So far I have seen a photo of a cake cooked in the shape of the virus and a few not-very-funny cartoons to do with a brand of beer.

And even if there were a meme that caught this moment and the world’s anxiety with any accuracy, would it have the staying power, profundity and beauty of Domenico Tintoretto’s painting? 

And is this because we no longer join faith, art and medicine as Venetians did in Tintoretto's day?

Perhaps.

The churches of the Veneto are now closed by corona virus, along with the bars and shops. However, there's one parish priest on the Venetian mainland who has found a way to revive the trinity of faith, art and medicine.

Don Andrea Vena with his 'furgoncino dai fideli'

A video here shows Don Andrea Vena travelling around Bibione with a statue of the Madonna in a van, broadcasting prayers for all those affected by the virus, including the worried tourists. A modern priest, Don Andrea posts his itineraries on Facebook and keeps in touch with his parishioners that way too. Father Andrea pauses in front of cross-roads, shops and also the homes of the elderly, so they may be brought out to hear his comforting corona virus invocation to the Madonna, patron saint of Bibione. (Picture courtesy of Veneto Vox).

'Forte!' observes a man in the video, as Father Andrea finishes his prayer. 'Just great!'

Michelle Lovric’s website

Save Venice’s website

'The Cure for Every Plague and Poison' by Karen Maitland

The Apothecary (circa 1752)

Artist: Pietro Longhi (1701-1785)

Of all the dangers that daily surrounded our ancestors the one that seem to strike dread into the hearts of the upper classes was the fear of being poisoned, and throughout history the search for a universal antidote against poison obsessed them as much the search for gold, the alchemist's stone or the Holy Grail.

Legend has it that the first universal antidote, known as Mithridate, was invented by Mithridates VI, King of Pontus (NE Turkey), who reigned from 120BCE, enthroned when he was just thirteen. He was terrified of being assassinated by poisoning, as other members of his family had been, and attempted to create an antidote to all poisons and venoms, as well as to the ‘systemic poisons’ which developed inside the body and were thought to be the cause of illness.

He first experimented with a number of single ingredients as antidotes to individual poisons by trying them out on condemned criminals. Then combined all the effective substances into one antidote, to produce a universal prophylactic against poisons and plagues, which he consumed daily. He believed that the interaction between the blended ingredients as they matured resulted in far greater healing properties than consuming any of the individual antidotes alone. Legend has it that it proved so effective that when, in 63BCE, he eventually tried to commit suicide using poison to avoid the humiliation of being taken prisoner, the poison had no effect and he was forced to ask his bodyguard to stab him.

Image on a coin of Mithridate VI

His records fell into the hands of the Roman conquerors of Pontus and Roman medici began to use them. Mithridate contained opium, myrrh, saffron, ginger, cinnamon and honey, along with some forty other ingredients including many herbs, roasted copper, sea squills and beaver castoreum. Andromachus, Nero's physician, is said to have removed some ingredients such as lizard from Mithridates’ concoction and added others, particularly viper's flesh. He called his new recipe ‘Galene’, ‘tranquillity’. Galene became known as ‘theriac’. Andromachus ‘improved’ upon mithridate by bringing the total number of ingredients to sixty-four.

Theriac took at least forty days to make and was supposed to be left for twelve years to mature, though the Emperor Marcus Aurelius apparently couldn’t wait that long and consumed after it had matured for only two months without any harm.

Sea Squills or Sea Onion (Drimia maritima)

Photo: Zeynel Cebeci

Theriac was usually swallowed with wine or dragon water (distilled from dragon-wort, polygonum bistorta, also known as Snake-weed or Bistort), but could instead be rubbed on the skin or eyes, which was advised particularly when being administered to babies and young children. It was used to treat malaria and also a plaster to heal venomous stings or bites. The 11th century Saxon leech book of Bald claims that in 9th century, Abel the Patriarch of Jerusalem sent theriac to King Alfred the Great and the book also includes a recipe for theriac.

The writings of the Greek and Roman physicians and alchemists re-emerged in Italy via Islamic scholars, who introduced them to the great medical universities such a Salerno. By 12th century, theriac was being produced in Venice and exported all over Europe. In England, it was called ‘Venetian treacle’, treacle being a corruption of theriac. It was used widely in Europe in the Middle Ages in an attempt to ward off or cure the Black Death.

Dragon-wort (Polygonum bistorta)

Photo: Muriel Bendel

But the cities of Bologna, Constantinople (Istanbul), Cairo, Genoa, Padua and Milan also competed to produce the best theriac from their own recipes and such was its value and importance that theriac was prepared in public with elaborate ceremony, so that potential customers could be assured that all the ingredients claimed to be in it had been added. If it failed to cure, the apothecary who had made it was held responsible for not having prepared it correctly and could be punished by the authorities.

‘Mummy’ made from ground-up human corpses mummified in Ancient Egypt was added to many theriac recipes during the Middle Ages, as that too had come to be regarded as a universal panacea and the tombs of Middle East were ransacked by Syrian merchants to keep up with the demand. When these became scarce, merchants and apothecaries were forced to use modern cadavers. The herbalist, John Parkinson, (1567-1650) maintained that the best mummy was obtained from bodies embalmed in the Egyptian manner, but Oswald Croll (1580-1609) recommended making mummy from hanged felons, preferably of ruddy complexion and around 24 years old.

Egyptian Mummy - Louvre Museum

Photo: Dada

In London in July 1586, during the reign of Elizabeth I, the Master and Wardens of Grocers Hall discovered ‘Jeane Triacle’ (Genoa treacle) being sold, which they found to be

‘unwholesome, being compounded by certain rude and unskilful men.’

As a result, they petitioned that the recipe for theriac’s proper manufacture should be kept on record at Grocer’s Hall and preparation of this treacle in London was entrusted to only one of their members, William Besse, an apothecary. He had the monopoly for the whole of London and seven miles around. This attempt at regulation by the Grocer’s guild had the effect of stimulating a flourishing illicit trade in unlicensed mithridate and theriac, and a great many more ‘unwholesome’ treacles were sold behind the backs of authorities. Human nature never changes, nor does our ending search for the wonder drugs which will cure all.

'The Village Apothecary' (who keeps his face masked)

Artist: David Tenier the Younger (1610-1690)

A Trip to Eyam: The Plague Village by Fay Bound Alberti

For as long as I can remember I have been interested in the history of the plague. I learned about the village of Eyam in Derbyshire while studying at the University of York. And a few weeks ago, I dragged my kids off for an explore. We stayed at the YHA’s Ilam Hall, an enormous, rambling place surrounded by green countryside. Perfect for a cheap base from which to explore points of interest in Derbyshire, including a trip to Eyam.

Ilam Hall, YHA

Eyam is a beautiful village in the Peak District National Park. It is most famous for an outbreak of bubonic plague that occurred in 1665, a year before the Great Fire of London. The present village was founded by Anglo-Saxons, though lead had been mined in the area since Roman times. The village was once industrial but now most of its economy is based on its status as ‘the plague village.’

That story began when a local tailor obtained a flea-infested bundle of cloth from London. Within a week the tailor’s assistant, George Vicars was dead, and more began dying in the household soon after. By pure coincidence when we stopped at Eyam we parked next to the ‘plague house’ where the outbreak had started. This house - like the others in the village where many people died - are a kind of living monument. People living there now must be used to visitors gawking up at the windows, trying to imaging how it would have been to live alongside loved ones dying of the plague: the smells, the sounds, the sights, the fear.

The ‘plague cottage’ of Eyam where the plague first broke out. The names of the dead in this and many nearby cottages are listed on signs outside

As the plague spread rapidly through the village, precautions were taken at the advice of the Reverend William Mompesson, the village rector and his Puritan Minister, Thomas Stanley. St Lawrence church was central to the lives of villagers, just as the church was generally for people in the seventeenth century, many of whom viewed the plague as God’s punishment for wrong doing (a particularly challenging thought so soon after the English Civil Wars). It was there that baptisms, weddings and funerals as well as the daily homilies on obedience and devotion reminded one of one’s place in the temporal and spiritual realms. Standing in the small church today, looking up at the now-faded wall paintings that would once have been brightly painted, one has a sense of how narrow and limited the world would have seemed if one was trapped there. Mompesson started to hold his services outside the church, as people were increasingly reluctant to stand shoulder to shoulder with their neighbours.

   

St Lawrence church at Eyam, with its famous stained-glass windows depicting the quarantine of the village and the now faded wall paintings. Can you spot the skeleton?

It was Mompesson who encouraged the villagers to isolate themselves from the outside world, quarantining its population rather than allowing the disease to spread further. The sacrifice of the people is told in a stained-glass window commemorating Eyam’s story. The number who died is disputed, but we know that at least half the village died to the plague – upwards of 273 people (the number recorded in the Eyam church register). The danger lasted for fourteen months, and it was far longer before anything like normalcy was resumed.

A list of residents who died from the plague 1665-1666, held in Eyam church

Survival was random. Several who remained alive had close contact with those who died from the plague but did not contract the disease themselves. One Elizabeth Hancock was uninfected though she buried six children and her husband in eight days. The unofficial village gravedigger Marshall Howe also survived.

Critics of the village’s quarantine have recently pointed out that wealthier residents were able to circumvent the ban.  Indeed, Mompesson sent his own children away to Sheffield so that that could escape the quarantine. He wanted his wife to go with them, but she refused, deciding instead to stay with her husband and tend to the people of Eyam. Catherine died of the plague and her grave still stands in the churchyard. Mompesson himself was forever associated with the plague and not universally welcomed at his next parish. He did remarry, however and eventually became Prebendary of Southwell, Nottinghamshire.  

The grave of Catherine Mompesson

Eyam is well worth a visit. Not just for the village itself and the glorious church which is filled with seventeenth-century detail, but also for the attractions around it. Some of these are plague-related – such as the Coolstone or Boundary stone, where money soaked in vinegar (believed to kill the infection) was placed in exchange for food and medicine for the isolated villagers. 

The Boundary Stone

You can visit Eyam museum, too, which was founded in 1994 and which tells the story of Eyam before the plague, as well as the various medical attempts to protect the villagers. This includes the traditional seventeenth-century plague doctor's costume that looks like something from a modern nightmare. The mask had a curved beak, shaped like that of a bird. Straps held the beak in place and the beak held dried flowers, including roses and carnations, herbs and camphor or vinegar. These contents were to keep away bad smells, which were believed to be the cause of plague in the seventeenth century (the theory of miasma being that bad smells were bad 'air' which was the cause of disease). 

The garb of the plague doctor, complete with beaked nose stuffed with herbs and spices. 

Much to the delight of the children, the museum also has waxwork models of people at various stages of bubonic plague, covered in sores and pustules. There is also a lot of information about rats, which spills over into the souvenirs for sale in the shop. Which is how we ended up with a pair of stuffed toy rats, Doris and Dave, who accompanied us on the rest of our tour.  

Doris and Dave explore Derbyshire 

Picture credits: 
The Boundary Stone, Wikipedia. 
Ilam Hall: yha.org.uk