Wednesday, December 2, 2020

Combating a Plague

Title page and frontispiece to Culpeper
You thought bleach was weird, check out this "cure" for the plague prescribed by the esteemed physician Nicholas Culpeper:

Take a Cock chicken, pull off the feather till the Rump be bare, then hold the bare fundament of the Chicken to a Plague Sore and it will attract the Venom to it from all parts of the body and dye; when he is dead, take another and use likewise; you may perceive when all the Venom is drawn out, for you shall see the Chicken no longer pant nor gape for breath; the party sick will instantly recover.

Got it--now we just need to find some chickens...

To see this cure and many others, as for Culpeper's School of Physick (London: Obadiah Blagrave, 1678), Rare R128.7 .C84 1678.

1 comment:

  1. This awesome books was a Gift of Alden L. Fiertz, Dartmouth College Class of 1952

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