King Casimir of Poland, who had a Jewish mistress, offered refuge in his country to all Jews seeking to escape persecution.
So, nice job, King Casimir. I hope you receive a History Channel special.
But it wasn’t only religious zealots who were causing mayhem. In Italy a group of gravediggers with the motto “Those who live in fear die” were especially menacing. They were called the becchini, and, though this is not historically accurate, in my head they look exactly like the gang of droogs in the movie A Clockwork Orange (1971). John Kelly writes: “The terrors of life in Florence grew to include a front door bursting open in the dead of night and a group of drunken, shovel-wielding grave diggers rushing into the house, threatening rape and murder unless the inhabitants paid a ransom.”13 Periodically, they threatened to drag people who were still alive to the grave if they weren’t paid. As if there weren’t enough dead people around.
Societal order was breaking down in every respect. Cities that had once been lovely were becoming mass graves. Boccaccio writes that plague pits of the deceased were so full in Florence that the dead had to be “stored tier upon tier like ship’s cargo, each layer of corpses being covered with a thin layer of soil til the trench was fill to the top.”14 The Florentine Marchionne di Coppo Stefani said that the pits looked like lasagna.15 (This image may ruin the Olive Garden for you forever.) But Florence had a slightly better corpse situation than Siena, of which the chronicler Agnolo di Tura writes, “There were also those who were so sparsely covered with earth that the dogs dragged them forth and devoured many bodies throughout the city.”16 This is what happens when a society does not have Marcus Aurelius to keep the bodies out of the streets.
All of these details can blur together a bit, so take a minute to consider what it would be like to see wild dogs dragging around human remains in front of your house. Then consider gravediggers running through town screaming, “Those who live in fear die,” while threatening to rape you. (For the purposes of this exercise, the becchini aren’t discriminating based on gender.) Then overlay the religious zealots parading their bloodied bodies on the streets, and the stench of burned Jewish corpses in the air, and I think you will have a good sense of how awful it would be to live in the time of the bubonic plague.
Now maybe eat a cupcake and take a bath; you earned it.
No one wanted to live in this hellscape. Everyone who could escape the lasagna-plague-pit-filled cities fled. Boccaccio’s novel The Decameron, which takes place in 1349, begins with a group of aristocrats bolting to the country to escape the plague. They do so not only “to preserve their lives” from the plague but to protect themselves from those given over to bestial behavior. Early in the novel the aristocrats came to an agreement:
[We should] make our retreate to our Country houses, wherewith all of us are sufficiently furnished, and there to delight our selves as best we may, yet without transgressing (in any act) the limits of reason. There shall we heare the pretty birds sweetly singing, see the hilles and plaines verdantly flouring; the Corne waving in the field like the billowes of the Sea, infinite store of goodly trees, and the Heavens more fairely open to us, then here we can behold them … Moreover, the Ayre is much fresh and cleere, and generally, there is farre greater abundance of all things whatsoever, needefull at this time for preservation of our health, and lesse offence or mollestation then we find here.17
Not everyone had a country house, so most people had to be content with leaving their immediate surroundings in favor of any place that seemed marginally less deadly. There are stories about how common it was for people to leave bread and water at a sick relative’s bedside, tell them they were going out to fetch supplies, and then abandoning them. The dying could be seen through the city plaintively rapping at their windows, hoping someone would come to ease their suffering. The fourteenth-century historian Gabriel de Mussis remarks upon how, as people died, they still begged for their families to come to them: “Come here, I’m thirsty, bring me a drink of water. I’m still alive. Don’t be frightened. Perhaps I won’t die. Please hold me tight, hug my wasted body. You ought to be holding me in your arms.”18 De Mussis describes the streets ringing with the cries of dying children who had been locked out of their homes, and who wondered: “Father, why have you abandoned me? Do you forget I am your child? O, Mother, where have you gone? Why are you now so cruel to me when yesterday you were so kind? You fed me at your breast and carried me within your womb for nine months.”19
If upon reading of these heartrending cries, you are thinking that you would be a heroic time traveler, rushing to those dying people’s aid, then let me stop you right there. First, your decision to travel to the plague-ridden fourteenth century is exceedingly ill-advised. I can only assume that in this fantasy you are a reporter for the Vice TV series. Second, no one wanted to force their children into the streets. No one wanted to leave them to die alone. They did so only because doing otherwise would doom them also. You could go to those children, but you would almost certainly die, because if the disease had spread to the victims’ lungs, they were contagious and could spread the disease by coughing on you. People were put in the nightmarish position where they could die alongside their loved ones or live and allow their loved ones to die utterly alone.
John Kelly explains the psychology of plague times in modern-day terms: “In plague, fear acts as a solvent on human relationships; it makes everyone an enemy and everyone an isolate. In plague every man becomes an island—a small, haunted island of suspicion, fear, and despair.”20 The fourteenth-century chronicler Agnolo di Tura summed up the age when he wrote: “Father abandoned child, wife husband, one brother another; for this illness seemed to strike through breath and sight. And so they died. None could be found to bury the dead for money or friendship. I, Agnolo di Tura … buried my five children with my own hands … And so many died that all believed it was the end of the world.”21
The Italian poet and humanist Petrarch certainly had every reason to believe the world was ending. He lost his great love Laura to the plague in 1348. Meanwhile, his brother was in a monastery where the other thirty-five inhabitants had died, leaving him alone with only his dog for company. Just him, his dog, and thirty-five corpses. Petrarch wrote to him, “I would, my brother, that I had never been born, or, at least, had died before these times … O happy posterity, who will not experience such abysmal woe and will look upon our testimony as a fable.”22
I worry, sometimes, that we do look on this plague as a far-removed fable, without remembering the very real cries of those on their deathbeds begging to be hugged.
In spite of the fear and isolation the plague produced, there were still doctors who attempted to minister to the sufferers. Some of the plague doctors were altruists who wanted to help their dying countrymen. Others were second-rate physicians who saw treating plague patients as their only way to make a living in medicine. That was especially true as plague doctors became so essential they were often employed by towns rather than individuals. They were outfitted with massive waxed robes and a staff to indicate their profession. They also—and this is where the term beak doctor comes in—wore bird-shaped masks.
Now, there is some conflict as to when this garb was introduced. While the majority of this chapter focuses on the bubonic plague’s impact on fourteenth- to sixteenth-century Europe, the plague continued to rage through Europe until the eighteenth century. It’s possible this type of outfit wasn’t worn until the seventeenth century. However, some sources attribute its origins to the fourteenth. I think it’s worth describing regardless of when it was introduced, but for you time travelers, do not bank on this outfit being available before 1619.
Although people at the time didn’t exactly know why, the beak doctor’s outfits did, miraculously, offer protection. You might not immediately guess that, as some of the logic behind their construction was bizarre. For instance, the mask was shaped like a bird because people thought birds could frighten away plague demons. People must hav
e really liked birds back then.
Like Big Bird, but slightly less creepy
The beaks of those bird masks were stuffed with anything that smelled good. That could be a veritable potpourri from mint to rose petals to orange peels. The sweet-scented items were thought to prevent the doctors from breathing the poisonous air. Remember that people believed bad smells caused plagues. The glass eyes fitted onto the masks would supposedly stop doctors from contracting the plague via the evil eye, preventing the “aerial spirits” from reaching them.
This all sounds like superstitious nonsense, but each aspect of the costume also served a purpose modern people would recognize as practical. The long, black waxed robes that went to the ground ensured that the doctors were bitten by very few fleas and thus were less likely to contract the disease through its most common source. The masks—with their glass eyes—provided distance between them and any cough droplets their patients might be spewing. The fact that it smelled like a Bath and Body Works store inside the masks meant the doctors were less disgusted by the smells of death and decay in a sufferer’s house and thus willing to spend more time with their patients. The staffs—well, they used their staffs to beat patients sometimes. For real! They did that when patients lunged at them, which is not very doctor-y but is helpful to keep infected people at a distance. Hopefully more often, though, a doctor would use the staff to point to areas of the body without actually touching the patient.
If only the “medical” methods of treating the disease had been anywhere near as effective as the outfit. If you were being tended to by a bubonic plague doctor in the fourteenth century, you could expect:
THE EXPLODING-FROG CURE.
People have been terrified of frogs through much of history. Today, the notion of a princess kissing a frog seems cute and funny, but historically, that would have been the most repellent act imaginable. Part of the bias against frogs might be because they were associated with this cure. The “exploding frog cure” was almost certainly not its technical name. It’s definitely the only way I’ll ever refer to it, though. Plague doctors would place a frog belly down on one of the patient’s buboes. The frog would absorb the poison, swell up, and ultimately explode. Then they’d do it with another frog, and another, until the frogs stopped exploding. If a frog did not explode, that meant the patient would die. This may be the most insane, ineffective cure in the world, but if you have the opportunity to travel back in time, please go see it performed, even though visiting the fourteenth century is dumb, so dumb, just so dumb.23
THE PIGEON CURE.
This is similar to the frog cure except the pigeons didn’t explode; they just died. The method dictated that doctors should “take a Pigeon, and plucke the feathers off her taile, very bare, and set her taile to the sore, and shee will draw out the venome till shee die; then take another and set too likewise, continuing so till all the venome be drawne out, which you shall see by the Pigeons, for they will die with the venome as long as there is any in it: also chicken or a henne is very good.”24 From that addendum about how chickens and hens would work in a pinch, I have the sense that people were just randomly applying any household creature they could catch to the afflicted’s wounds.
THE FIG AND ONION CURE.
Onions continued to be a real medicinal staple during this period. When people weren’t spreading them around the house, figs and onions and butter would be applied to the sores to soften them. After some time, the buboes would be cut into so the poison could drain out. You were to: “take a greate onion, hollow it, put into it a fig cut small and a dram of Venice treacle, put it close stopt in wet paper and roast it in the embers, apply it hot unto the tumour.”25 You were supposed to apply a boiling onion to your sore. This method was, as you might imagine, as painful as it was useless.
BLOODLETTING AND FECES POULTICES.
Sometimes (not often) the boils burst, and then the patient recovered. But covering the burst buboes with poultices that contained, among other things, feces, was a step back in the recovery journey. I realize that “Do No Harm” is the first rule of medicine, but “Don’t apply human shit to an open wound” seems like a good second one. Oh, and bloodletting didn’t help, either.26
* * *
Obviously, the first priority in combatting plague should be creating an environment where there are fewer rats harboring fleas. This has nothing to do with flagellating yourself or collecting frogs.
The first person who combatted the bubonic plague in any sort of sensible or helpful way was Michel de Nostredame, more familiarly known as Nostradamus. Born in 1503, Nostradamus is sometimes reported to be a wizard who predicted the end of the world. People have come to think he had magical abilities because Nostradamus spent his later years sitting in a castle with his wealthy second wife, writing books of predictions about events he thought would happen. Those publications were common for somewhat famous people to produce at the time. Our equivalent might be if Warren Buffett wrote a book about where he thinks the economy will be in the future. That’s not the same as being a wizard. That’s just a thing people who are famous for being smart do.
I am only eager to dispel the notion that Nostradamus was an otherworldly wizard because I think it overshadows the fact that he was a learned and progressive man, and those skills are as valuable as wizardry. They’re also skills humans can actually cultivate. His powers didn’t come from the heavens; they came from the fact that he was an avid reader, interested in the scientific advances of his own time, as well as the medical arts of the past. As a teenager, he was seen as something of an oddball because he was convinced that the earth revolved around the sun in the manner Copernicus described, an idea which went against the church’s view. (He was right about that.) However, more relevant to his work with the ill and his ideas about how to treat plague outbreaks was likely Nostradamus’s admiration for the writings of Galen. In 1558 he would even publish his own translation of Menodotus’s paraphrase of Galen.
Not a real wizard despite the beard
Long before that, though, he spent the 1520s working as an apothecary preparing pills, and starting a doctorate at the University of Montpellier. There is a disputed rumor that he was expelled from the school because he had worked in an apothecary, which wasn’t seen as a respectable practice. Many people just ground up anything and sold their “magic” medications, but Nostradamus’s pills kind of worked. (We’ll get to them later in this chapter, but they were essentially vitamin C.) He went back to his trade through the 1530s, becoming especially intent on helping treat the bubonic plague.
It has been reported that Nostradamus began contemplating treatments for the bubonic plague when he saw a sufferer waving to him from her window. Again, this was not an uncommon sight. When he went closer to her window, he saw that she was so certain of her imminent death that she had already begun stitching her shroud around herself. By the time Nostradamus entered her house, the woman had died “with her shroud half sewn.”27 That is such a good anecdote! Though surely at least part of his motivation to deal with the plague had to be that his first wife and two daughters died from the disease in the 1530s.
Without antibiotics no one could truly cure people once they had the plague, but Nostradamus was unusually successful at finding effective methods to deter the disease. Many of those methods stemmed from Nostradamus’s own rather modern preferences regarding cleanliness (which might have been influenced from his reading of classic texts, like Galen’s). Some of Nostradamus’s methods included:
GETTING THE CORPSES OUT OF THE STREET.
Obviously, having corpse pits is a disaster. You need to bury the dead if only because having them lying around is a surefire way to attract those flea-carrying rats. Also, when people see bodies lying in the streets, they become absolutely terrified. Given that fear is the enemy of reason during disease outbreaks, it’s a good idea to try to keep those streets clean.28
REMOVING SOILED LINENS.
Nostradamus wasn’t the first person to
decide that sheets or clothing people have died in shouldn’t be kept around. Galen was also keen on the idea that people ought to clean their clothes. Closer to Nostradamus’s own time, Boccaccio writes of an incident where “the rags of a poor man just dead, being thrown into the street, and two hogs coming by at the same time and rooting amongst them, and shaking them about in their mouths, in less than an hour turned round and died on the spot.”29 Filthy bedding provided an especially great home to plague-carrying fleas. Disposing of linens should be easy, but think about how much you hate the idea of changing your sheets when you’re sick. Now think about a world where many people wore the same outfit for a whole year, and where no one had taught you that changing linens was a chore you were supposed to do. Still, society was making progress!30
DRINKING BOILED WATER.
Though not as much fun as imbibing wine or onion broth, drinking boiled water was effective, especially when the rivers were swimming with corpses. Seriously, just full of corpses. The pope had to bless the Rhône River in France because it contained so many bodies and people wanted to believe their loved ones were in holy ground. Although the bubonic plague wasn’t transmitted by water, drinking contaminated water could result in independent health problems, which could weaken a person’s immune system and make them more susceptible to the plague.31
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