Or instead of the complicated nostrum, here are two. By the first, it is said, “Secretary Naunton removed the Plague from his Heart.” The second, it is asserted, was prepared by Sir Francis Bacon and approved by Queen Elizabeth.
“An Ale Posset-drink with Pimpernel seethed in it, till it taste strong of it, drunk often, removed the infection, tho’ it hath reached the very heart....
Take a Pint of Malmsey burnt, with a spoonful of bruised Grains, i.e., Cardamom Seeds, of the best Treacle a spoonful, and give the Patient to drink of it two or three Spoonfuls pretty often, with a draught of Malmsey Wine after it, and so let him sweat; if it agrees with him, and it stays with him, he is out of Danger; if he vomits it up, repeat it again.”
Let us leave the Plague for a moment and consider the general subject of medicine in the seventeenth century.
When he was ill, the Londoner had as many nostrums and infallible medicines as his successor of the present day. We have our effervescent drinks, our pills, our ointments—so had our ancestor. First of all, the pharmacopœia included an immense quantity of herbs, specifics for this and the other; their names still preserve some of their supposed qualities—such as fever few, eye-bright, etc. Thus, walnut water was supposed to be good for sore eyes. The apothecary understood how to cover a pill with sugar so as to make it tasteless; and his pills were great boluses which we should now find it hard indeed to swallow. The physicians prescribed potions fearfully and wonderfully made, some containing thirty, forty, or even seventy ingredients. Such was “Mithidate” or “Mithridates,” as a common medicine was called.
For fevers they prescribed a “cold water affusion,” with drinking of asses’ milk. When the Queen was ill in 1663 they shaved her head and applied pigeons to her feet. When a man fell down in a fit, they treated him vigorously. No half measures were allowed. They boxed and cuffed his ears, pulled his nose, threw a bucket of cold water into his face, and pinched and kneaded the nape of his neck. Powdered mummy for a long time was held to be a specific against I know not what diseases. It is said that the reason why it went out of use was that Jews took to embalming bodies and then sold them for genuine ancient mummies.
If a dentist was wanted he was sought in the street; he was an itinerant tooth drawer, and he went his regular round, carrying with him his “dentist’s key” and decorated with strings of teeth, while he bawled his calling and offered his services.
Ben Jonson ridicules the pretences and pretensions of the quacks of his time when he puts the following extravagance into the mouth of Bobadil:—
“Sir, believe me, upon my relation for what I tell you, the world shall not reprove. I have been in the Indies, where this herb grows, where neither myself, nor a dozen gentlemen more of my knowledge, have received the taste of any other nutriment in the world, for the space of one and twenty weeks but the fume of this simple only; therefore, it cannot be, but ’tis most divine. Further, take it in the nature, in the true kind: so, it makes an antidote, that, had you taken the most deadly poisonous plant in all Italy, it should expel it, and clarify you, with as much ease as I speak. And for your green wound—your Balsamum and your St. John’s wort, are all mere gulleries and trash to it, especially your Trinidado: your Nicotian is good too. I could say what I know of the virtue of it, for the expulsion of rheums, raw humours, crudities, obstructions, with a thousand of this kind, but I profess myself no quacksalver. Only this much: by Hercules, I do hold it, and will affirm it before any prince in Europe, to be the most sovereign and precious weed that ever the earth tendered to the use of man.”
Francis Bacon—the last of his generation to be considered a quack—prescribed a regimen which would make longevity a certainty.
Every morning the patient was to inhale the fume of lignaloes, rosemary, and bay-leaves dried; “but once a week to add a little tobacco, without otherwise taking it, in a pipe.” For supper he was to drink of wine in which “gold had been quenched,” and to eat bread dipped in spiced wine. In the morning he was to anoint the body with oil of almonds and salt and saffron. Once a month he was to bathe the feet in water of marjoram, fennel, and sage.... That diet was pronounced best “which makes lean and then renews.” The great people were content with nothing less than extravagant remedies. Salt or chloride of gold was taken by noble ladies; dissolved pearls were supposed to have mystic virtues, and even coral was a fashionable medicine.