Q&A YOU ASK, WE ANSWER
How did people try to ‘cure’ the Black Death?
SHORT ANSWER On top of the crushed emeralds and poultry accessories were some keepers, like social distancing
LONG ANSWER Needless to say that in utterly desperate times, the scared masses of 14th-century Europe turned to desperate measures to try and live through the Black Death. Some of the ‘cures’ aren’t that unusual in the pantheon of strange (and ineffective) medicinal treatments throughout history, such as bloodletting and drinking arsenic or mercury, but that’s just the beginning.
Believing that the disease spread in foul air – the miasma theory – some people would carry anything sweet smelling, like flowers or packets of herbs, while others took the opposite approach and hid from the killer vapours by sitting in sewers. Having fires constantly burning, abstaining from meat, imbibing a variety of potions, or crushing emeralds into a powder and mixing it with food were all touted as ways to keep the Black Death at bay. And the poor needn’t worry if they couldn’t get hold of emeralds to crush: a unicorn horn would apparently suffice.
This is not to say there weren’t some sensible ideas, as people in medieval times were as used to terms like quarantine and social distancing as we have become in the last couple of years. Let’s be grateful, though, that the same last-ditch remedies for those who got sick with the Black Death aren’t recommended today, including bathing in urine, rubbing faeces
