Weird Plague Treatments or Put Down that Chicken. By L. A. Kelley

Weird Plague Treatments or Put Down that Chicken

Well, it’s been over a year. Our good friend Covid is like that one annoying relative that shows to ruin every get-together and won’t go away. Our ancestors survived bouts of the Black Death with their homemade treatments. I say it’s time to reach back in history and start trying them again.

Helpful Animals or What is Mom Doing with that Chicken?

Snakes often got the blame for the plague, their evil vapors fouling the air, but they could make amends. According to Medieval medicine, one evil attracts another, so pieces of an “evil” snake placed on the patient would draw out the evil sickness. Low and behold, they were cured. Or died of blood poisoning. 

Squeamish about snakes? How about leeches? They were used to suck out the “bad” blood that caused the disease and leave the good blood in the body. Or not, and the patient died. Then there’s also chopped up pigeons. Rub bloody parts all over and stand back while the cure takes hold or the neighbors call the cops.

My favorite treatment is the Vicary Method, named after an ancient doctor named Thomas Vicary. I can’t understand why it hasn’t made the rounds. He was a doctor, for heaven’s sake. He must have known what he was doing. Of course, back then being a doctor didn’t require a medical degree, basic knowledge of sanitation, or even common sense. The Vicary Method should really have been called, “What the Hell are you Doing with that Chicken?” The noble doctor would pluck feathers from a chicken’s rump, and then tie the chicken to the patient, so the rump touched an open sore. He believed chickens breathed through their bottoms, so the semi-plucked chicken would draw the plague from the patient. The idea of transmitting a bacterial infection never crossed his mind. If the patient died, so be it. If chicken died first, he’d simply slap on another.

Out of Chicken Butts? Try Vegetables or Emeralds.

For the vegetarians among you or those low on chicken butts there other cures guaranteed 100% effective by our Medieval ancestors. Rub onions on your skin or a eat a combination of mustard, mint sauce, apple sauce and horseradish to balance wet, dry, hot and cold humors in the body. It will definitely effect a cure, if it doesn’t cause the runs first. Have a delicate digestion? Down a delicious crushed emerald. No emeralds lying around? Other tasty suggestions were drinking vinegar, arsenic, mercury or even ten-year-old treacle. Why it had to be ten-years-old is beyond me, but what’s the point of waiting for it to age? The arsenic and mercury would put you six feet under immediately.

Treatments that May be Worse than the Disease.

Clean urine had healing properties, according to ancient medical texts. So, they advised suffers to dive right into a urine bath. Poop mixed with lily root and tree sap was guaranteed to chase away the plague and anyone else with a sense of smell.

For a last resort use flagellation. People whipped themselves to purge their bodies of the sins that brought the plague in the first place. Other believed the hell with that. The best way to chase away the plague was in wild abandon so sickness couldn’t catch you; pillage, loot and then party until the cows come home. I’m with them.

L. A. Kelley writes sci-fy and fantasy adventures with humor, romance, and a touch of sass. She is totally vaccinated and out of chicken.