8
The monks charged with looking after the health of their communities were called infirmarers. They were chosen for their knowledge of medicine, and as they often served for lengthy periods they acquired exceptional working knowledge of the symptoms and prognosis of many ailments. In addition to responsibility for the health of the community and prescribing treatment for the sick, infirmarers consulted with a variety of medical practitioners, including leading specialists brought from a considerable distance and at substantial cost, if the need arose. Although based on many false premises, medieval medicine was to a considerable extent a logically constructed and internally consistent discipline, and therefore convincing to contemporaries. New diseases were expertly assimilated into the existing intellectual framework, and the manner in which the plague of the mid-fourteenth century, which had not been seen for seven hundred years, was incorporated into existing theory was particularly impressive. Academic medicine coexisted with pragmatic medicine, derived from long experience of the ailments of both humans and farm animals, and with a formidable array of pagan and Christian potions and charms.
A university-trained physician stood at the top of his profession. Like Chaucer’s doctor of physic,
He knew the cause of every malady,
Whether of hot or cold or moist or dry,
And where engendered and of what humor,
He was a very perfect practitioner.
But the remedies from such expensive physicians were not necessarily more efficacious than those dispensed by local or itinerant herbalists, healers, leeches, and quacks.
The nature of surviving sources, as well as their scarcity, means that very little light can be thrown on disruption to the normal patterns of communications between towns, villages, and regions. We know from market tolls and customs accounts that trade as well as production plummeted during 1348-1349, but it is extremely difficult to glean much hard detail on how people conducted themselves in the surrounding counties as the plague raged in the capital. In the circumstances it is reasonable to follow the more loquacious chroniclers and commentators of Italy, France, and elsewhere, and surmise that people in England were also fearful of contagion, sensibly tended to shun contact with strangers, and tried to stop them coming into their settlements. But these sensible precautions created tension, not only with the need to buy and sell goods and earn money in order to survive, but with the desire for spiritual nourishment, which might be sought from itinerant clergy as well as the local parish clergy and church. The reprobates among such wayfarers have been immortalized in Chaucer’s portraits of the friar, summoner, and pardoner, with the former “an easy man to give penance” for money, and the latter’s bag “brimful of pardons, come from Rome all hot.”
The two new young clerics soon began to provide welcome support to the two priests who assisted in ministering to the spiritual needs of Master John’s large and populous parish, and this prompted him to reflect again on an invitation he had received a couple of weeks before to visit his friend Richard, the infirmarer at the abbey of Bury. The summons from Richard was urgent in tone, but out of tiredness and devotion to his parishioners, and perhaps fear of what he might learn, John had delayed responding to the entreaty. Now, however, he could be spared for a day or so. As soon as he informed his housekeeper of his plans, a rumor started to spread through the village that the monks of Bury had discovered a sure means of protection against the plague and a cure for those who were afflicted by it, and that Master John was going to collect the medication and bring it back to Walsham. The truth, however, was that his friend’s letter contained no such marvelous tidings but simply urged him to visit soon so that Richard could inform him of the many discoveries about the plague found in ancient texts in the abbey library. While there were possibly some grounds for optimism in what Richard had written, try as he might John could not construe its words to imply that the secrets of the plague had been uncovered and a cure had been found.
Since travelers were likely to be treated with suspicion or even hostility, John decided to leave early and arrive at Bury before midmorning. Taking back paths and detours around villages, and keeping his horse at a trot when near any cottages, John had an uneventful journey until he drew within half a mile of the city. There he was forced roughly to a halt by a band of men armed with staves, knives, and a sword or two. They announced that they had been directed by the citizens of Bury to stop anyone entering who did not have lawful business that would be useful to the residents. When Master John told them who he was and protested at their rudeness, they told him to hold his peace, and that so far their actions had ensured that their city remained free of the plague. The men kept their distance while John explained why he had come to Bury, and then he unhooked his cloak to reveal his clerical chasuble. In further evidence of his good intentions, he offered his letter of invitation to the leader, a brawny miller wearing a dusty white coat with a blue hood, who told him to place it on the ground. Reluctantly, after walking around it a few times and peering for signs of the plague, the miller picked the parchment up with the ends of his fingers and held it at arm’s length while he perused it. Perhaps he recognized the name of the monk who had signed it, for John began to sense that he might be permitted to enter the town. But first he was made to strip to his undergarments and turn about while holding up his arms and spreading his legs, so that he could show the motley band of sentinels that he had no signs of the plague about him.
Though he had demonstrated that he was a priest, was free of the pestilence, and on permissible business, Master John still found himself accompanied to the abbey by one of the men, who insisted that they take the most direct route and not stop on the way. Unusually, John found the gates of the abbey barred, and he was forced to explain his business to the gatekeeper at considerable length, even though he knew the face of his inquisitor on the other side of the grill well from previous visits. Eventually his friend Richard came to the gate, and it was opened for him to enter.
Richard had shown an interest in medicine from an early age and had been in charge of the infirmary for many years. It was his duty as infirmarer to supervise medical care for the monks when they were sick, arrange for the regular bloodletting of the whole community, supervise the herb garden, order medical supplies from apothecaries and grocers, and deal with the physicians and surgeons he summoned to treat monks he could not cure himself. Richard liked to spend much of his time in a small stone room lined with clay and metal jars of various sizes and colors, grinding up herbs and spices with his favorite pestle and mortar and preparing the potions and unguents he used to treat his patients. But he also had to find time to supervise the servants and young monks who nursed the residents and day patients, direct the gardeners who grew many of the herbs he used, and keep an eye on the cook who prepared a wide variety of meals, each one of which had to be appropriate to the particular patient’s condition.
The infirmary occupied a large site in the monastery. In addition to a hall which sometimes accommodated as many as six beds, it had a number of private chambers intended for the more senior monks and those whose condition required them to be isolated from the rest of the patients. Yet to Richard’s constant annoyance, much of this space tended to be filled with the old, the tired, and the lazy, rather than the genuinely sick. In recent weeks he had been trying especially hard to release vacant beds in preparation for the pestilence. But as they walked through the courts and corridors Richard muttered resentfully that he had just been forced by the abbot, William of Burnham, to give up his best chamber to accommodate a rich lay benefactor who wished in his old age to retire to a place where both his body and his soul would be well looked after.
As he journeyed to Bury, seeing no signs of disease anywhere, Master John had become somewhat optimistic. But he could see at once that Richard had little good news to impart. As was his custom, the infirmarer began with a lengthy preamble, but this time in uncharacteristically hushed tones rather than the loud voice with which he usually broadcast his skills and learning. And alarmingly, he halted his discourse whenever anyone came within earshot.
“Since word of the great new pestilence first reached this abbey more than two years ago,” Richard reported, “I have meticulously quizzed every visitor with any knowledge of how the pestilence raged in other countries, and how the great physicians of the world observed it. As it spread toward England and I became convinced that we would not be spared, I have sought to supplement these haphazard and sometimes untrustworthy accounts with a systematic understanding of the truth contained in the writings of the great masters of medicine. This superb library contains a score of books on medicine, including many written by ancient Greek and Roman scholars who knew all the secrets of the world. I have searched them all for references to plague, and I have made a number of journeys to view books in other libraries, in Cambridge, Ely, and Thetford. But what I found there added precious little to what I had gleaned in my own abbey’s library. My eyesight has suffered from the long hours spent reading by candlelight, and my studies have been constantly interrupted by the entreaties of brethren who are forever finding suspicious marks on their skin or pains in their bodies, which in fear they foolishly take to be symptoms of the plague.”
Richard laughed scornfully but John, who was by now displaying some impatience, urged his friend to reveal his findings. Although Richard resented being hurried, he soon arrived at his first major point: “In all of the works of the ancient scholars I have consulted, along with the multitude of lesser works written by more recent foreign and English writers, there is nothing to surpass the quality and authority of the great Greek master, Galen. Therefore, I have undertaken a most careful of study of all of Galen’s works which I could lay my hands on; especially those in which the master comments on the achievements of Hippocrates, the greatest physician who ever lived. This has shown me that Hippocrates is the fount of all certain knowledge on diseases such as the present plague. But Galen took Hippocrates’ understanding of these matters even further. He was able to do this, I believe, because many, many centuries ago, Galen might well have lived through an epidemic of the same diseases that are striking the world now.”
These last words gripped Master John’s attention, and he listened intently as the infirmarer went on with his analysis. “Galen taught us that the body has three crucial sectors, emunctoria he calls them, dominated in turn by the brain, the heart, and the liver. Now, from a study of all of the symptoms of these present scourges, I have found that in the type of pestilence that gives rise to great swellings, these swellings, commonly called buboes, form in one of three places on the body, each of which corresponds to one of the emunctoria. When a victim is infected, probably by breathing in foul vapors, the poison enters the body and goes to either the brain, the heart, or the liver. The body forces the poison out of these vital organs, so if it is forced from the brain it forms a swelling in the neck or behind the ears. If it comes from the heart it commonly forms a bubo in the underarm, and if from the liver, the swelling appears in the groin or on the thigh.”
“See, I have one of Galen’s treatises here,” he said triumphantly, “in which these lumps are explained.” And with that he took down a large text, strongly bound in dark brown leather, opened it at a place he had marked with a quill, and began to read from a section entitled “The Art of Medicine,” asking John not to be offended that he was translating the Latin into English for him, because of the technical terms it contained: “ ‘Unnatural lumps are to be divided into inflammations, indurations, tumors, and erysipelas.’ I am still seeking guidance on how to translate this last word, which is Greek, but I am hopeful that Galen could be describing exactly the same lumps in the groin and the neck that swell up on victims of this present pestilence,” he interjected, before returning to his text.
“A constant pain in a part indicates either a dissolution of continuity there or an overall change of the substance. Continuity is dissolved by cutting, erosion, compression, or tension. The substance is changed by heat, cold, dryness, or moisture.” John’s mind was already beginning to wander, but his attention was gripped by Richard’s excitement as his finger ran down toward the bottom of the folio. “See here, ‘Substances expelled may be divided into parts of the affected area, excretions, or matter contained within the part in its natural state.’ Time and again we have been told that the swellings caused by the present pestilence excrete substances that are not part of the natural substance of that part of the body, like blood, but rather pus and bile.”
“But what do your researches tell us about how we may cure or avoid the pestilence?” asked John eagerly. Richard laid the book down and closed it with some force. Then, at last, he began to explain all that he knew, gathered from the vast knowledge he had gained from all the books he had studied and the great skill acquired from his long experience treating the sick. Master John listened intently to the soft and occasionally wavering voice of his friend disclose the awful truth about the pestilence that was about to destroy them. As a priest, Richard first dealt with theological issues, and after a lengthy discourse he concluded that, while scholars might dispute whether the sinful and unrepentant will be more vulnerable than the confessed and contrite when the plague came to the place where they lived, everyone was in mortal danger. He further elaborated on how the pestilence invaded the body and then coursed through it. But, much to John’s frustration, he refused to be rushed into disclosing how the pestilence might be cured or avoided. Finally, after many promptings, Richard conceded that he had little advice to give on cures.
“I have not so far discovered any cure that works once the victim is infected, and I am not convinced that any exists, although some victims do recover,” he said flatly. “But for the avoidance of this pestilence, I am able to give some very useful advice, which is in addition to what we all know about the necessity of keeping our humors in balance.” John looked up eagerly. “But you will not like to hear it,” Richard said mischievously. “A host of doctors, now and in the past, have claimed to have found the means of escaping infection by using a miscellany of different remedies—taking this or that potion, avoiding this or that food, or this or that activity. However, I am not convinced that any of their advice will work with this present scourge, which is far more devastating than anything I have read about. But this much I do know for certain. The chance of infection for a healthy person is greatly increased by inhaling air breathed out by those who are sick, even if that healthy person is a priest administering the last rites. Further, it has many times been reported by learned doctors, and confirmed in the books, that an airy spirit of poisonous vapor is emitted by the eyes when someone is heavily infected and close to death, and that this vapor can pass on the sickness merely by striking the eye of a bystander.”
John interrupted, “This must be how people have become infected even though they have scrupulously avoided any intimate contact with the sick. The clerk from Avignon repeatedly asserted that this had happened, in the face of your skeptical questioning.”
Richard impatiently waved him quiet. “For these reasons, I conclude that the best means by far of avoiding catching the plague is not only to shun all contact with other people when plague is in your town or village, but to flee immediately from where the plague is. If you have sense you should flee even from where it is threatening to come. As the experts have learned across Europe: if you wish to stay alive, flee the plague quickly, go far away, and return as late as possible.
“But of course,” the infirmarer added wryly, “all this expert advice so painstakingly gathered is of no use whatsoever to either of us. Because a priest cannot desert his flock nor a monk flee his cloister.”
Notwithstanding his bleak conclusions, Richard later divulged that for some months he had been building up stocks of aloes, salt of Ammon, and myrrh, in order to provide protection for members of his community against the plague and offer them the best chance of survival. As he handed a tiny quantity of each to John and demonstrated with a small brass pestle and mortar how to pound them and infuse them in wine, he said, “These palliatives are already becoming very expensive, and when the plague strikes this region they will become impossible to obtain. But they are worth searching for, because Rufus of Ephesus, one of the most respected of the ancient physicians, never knew of a person dying of plague who did not recover after this draught.”
John chuckled cynically. “Even I have heard of Rufus of Ephesus, and if the cure is that simple and that well-known why have so many physicians in so many countries confessed their helplessness to save victims from the pestilence?”
Richard rebuked him, but with a twinkle in his eye, saying that medicine was far too complex a field of study for even a clever man to understand without many years of study. And he quickly moved on to the other essential task, the spiritual healing of the dead as well as the living. The infirmarer advised Master John to buy as much oil as he could afford for annealing the dying, and to have stores of wax and candles put by for the torrent of deaths sure to follow when the plague arrived. John had already begun to stockpile supplies, but he promised he would not fail to visit the market in the city on his way home to make further purchases. “And, most important of all,” Richard stressed to his dear friend, “do all that you can to welcome into your parish as many of the itinerant clergy as you can. Treat them in a friendly manner, and not too severely. Even if this means accepting those who in the past you would have had no hesitation in rejecting, and permitting them to charge higher fees than you would like or they will never stay.”
As Master John rode slowly back to Walsham, his saddle bags bulging with wax, candles, and oil, he reflected ruefully that, for all the fine words and deep wisdom he had absorbed that day, running away from the plague was probably the only effective course of action. Any cures, however painstakingly based on the teachings of the ancient masters, were likely to prove far less effective than simply fleeing from areas where the scourge raged. This dismal conclusion fitted very well with all information he had previously acquired from the abundance of reliable and unreliable reports he had heard, that told of hoards of terrified people grabbing a few possessions and taking flight in the face of an approaching plague. Though he shuddered to accept it, the effectiveness of running away added weight to the infamous tales of priests deserting their flocks in their hour of greatest need. But flight was impossible for a good priest. He knew that he would have to take himself daily into the very heart of the sickness, minister to the dying in their infected houses, and bury their polluted bodies. Though he must remember not to look into their eyes.
Throughout the dark, wet days of winter Walsham church was brilliantly lit by a profusion of torches and candles, many made with the finest beeswax. All these lights had been eagerly donated by parishioners, both rich and poor, in numbers never before seen. Where there had once been chattering, gossip, and occasional laughter during services, there was now rapt concentration, complemented by the almost constant murmuring of prayers. Yet members of the flock were not content to be silent witnesses to the liturgy in St. Mary’s, and they responded with fervent recitations of Ave Verum Corpus when the Host was elevated, piteous wailings when the sufferings of Christ on the cross were contemplated, and the chanting of prayers to the Virgin Mary whenever there was a lull in the service or a new act of ritual raised the level of excitement.
Hail be thou Mary full of grace;
God is with thee in every place;
Blessed be thou of all women;
And the fruit of thy womb Jesus!
Amen.
The great majority of villagers took solace in these rituals and drew spiritual comfort and strength from the sense of participation and community. But there were a few grave and self-contained individuals in Walsham who, although extremely pious, took strong objection to all exuberant outward displays of religious emotion. These plain-minded folk complained that the ceaseless prayers and Masses, processions, genuflections, inclinations, censings, kissings, oblations, kindling of lights, and pilgrimages were a distraction from the contemplation of God, and apt to confuse and deflect people from the leading of a good life. Resting on their own convictions, they made few calls on the time of priests, praying largely in their own homes or in those of other like-minded people, silently confessing their sins. For they held that the path to salvation was primarily in their own hands, and lay strictly in leading a good life.
Contact with London virtually ceased in the weeks after Christmas. Scarcely anyone could be found who was willing to carry goods to the city, and even those who attempted to come to Walsham with commodities from more than a few miles distant were often shunned. So, with ample stores of food from the recent good harvest, and with the depths of winter confining mobility and the availability of work, Walsham closed in on itself and tried to shut off the outside world.
The craving for isolation heightened in late January as word filtered through that the pestilence was raging ever more fiercely in London, with tens of thousands dying and cemeteries so overflowing that new burial grounds had to be speedily consecrated. In this climate of fear even minor or common ailments in the village could panic the patient and his family, and induce near hysteria in friends and neighbors who had recently spent time with him. Although none of the more lurid reports of excessive and inexplicable deaths in the vicinity of Walsham, caused by such portents as the coughing of blood or swellings in the neck or groin, were confirmed, it made good sense to deter strangers and visitors, especially those who came from the south. Anyone who aroused suspicion or stayed too long was treated harshly and driven away. From time to time attempts were made to bar entry to all outsiders, but the numbers of roads, tracks, and paths leading into the village from all sides and crisscrossing its lands made this impossible.
Yet, rage as the plague might in London, there were no signs that it was stirring far from the capital, and the numbers of deaths in the towns and villages around Walsham did not show any reliable signs of increasing. Though some in the village counseled against placing too much reliance on the reports of commercial people who had much to gain by playing down the dangers of trade and travel, it was considered a most favorable sign that those who continued to bring essential commodities from the south all seemed to be in the best of health and repeatedly swore that they had encountered no signs of plague along the way.
Consequently, by early February, when a fragile confidence began to grow, some restrictions were relaxed. Among the many familiar faces who were once again welcomed to come and go from Walsham were drovers taking animals to distant markets, merchants and traders riding in carts loaded with goods or leading teams of horses with bulging packs, and peddlers and hucksters tramping on foot carrying bags of cheap goods. But certain unfamiliar faces were also greeted. Some of these, mainly men but a few women, belonged to the purveyors of medical, magical, and spiritual protection against the plague. The numbers of sellers of potions and charms mushroomed during this time of impending doom, but they all did good business among the fearful folk of Suffolk. A few of the quacks had visited Walsham before, but most had not; some had impressive qualifications and had acquired good reputations, but most had not. Pardoners, unlicensed as well as licensed, brought wallets stuffed with little rolls of parchment that were powerful enough, they claimed, to absolve all the sins which weighed heavily on souls and offended God (see figure 20). They brandished sacred documents hot from Rome which bore the signatures of cardinals or even the pope himself. If these lofty indulgences proved too expensive for the poor or too fanciful for the skeptical, the villagers were offered a cheaper but still attractive alternative obtained from bishops, priors, and archdeacons: pardons designed to suit the size of every purse.
Holy men came to Walsham bearing pieces of bone from the skeletons of saints, hairs from hallowed heads, fingers from sacred hands, and pieces of wood from the cross of Christ, or at the least a chunk of wood from the coffin in which he had been laid. If asked, they found it easy to produce from their packs a fragment of the veil of Our Lady, or perhaps her shoe, or the ring of St. John the Evangelist, or even the very finger which John the Baptist had pointed at Christ. Some of these holy relics were brought in glass bottles, so they could be seen but not touched; others were handed around and could be kissed for a halfpenny, or purchased for 4d. When the incredulous, or the simply curious, asked for details of the provenance of these objects, they were told long and mysterious tales of far-off countries and a series of providential survivals and fortuitous meetings, which had brought them from the Holy Land many centuries ago to the green fields of Suffolk in 1349. The arrival of these holy relics in Walsham was truly a miracle, and every step in their long journey over the centuries had been guided by God’s own hand.
The pardoners and preachers often gave fiery sermons to announce their arrival and gather the largest number of people. These diatribes inspired fear and whetted the appetite for the wares they sold. The crowds who gathered were told of the coming of death-dealing pestilence and of the day of doom, and were captivated by biblical quotations such as, “Before him went the pestilence, and burning coals went forth at his feet”; and again, “there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes in diverse places. All these are the beginnings of sorrows.” When Master John permitted them, which was but rarely, the pious wayfarers declaimed in church. And when, despite the entreaties of their supporters, they were refused entry, they freely gathered audiences together in the churchyard or in the road outside, in the market or even in the fields (see figure 21).
Almost all itinerant preachers and pardoners left Walsham with their purses far heavier than when they arrived. It was not that the simple folk of Walsham believed all they were told; time and again they saw through the masks of false piety to the greed and cynicism beneath. And they laughed heartily when hecklers claimed they had been shown in the last three months more wood from Christ’s cross than would have been used to build Noah’s ark. But so great was the terror of being struck down in a state of sin within the next few weeks or months that few dared to reject every opportunity to gain spiritual cleansing and divine protection. While there were some who eagerly offered up their last silver groats for a piece of bone which looked more likely to have come from a pig’s carcass than from a saint’s holy body, the more skeptical majority felt that it was worth some small change from their pocket to have the possibility of benefiting from the spiritual beneficence of a particularly convincing memento or document.
The arrival of a doctor or leech provoked a similar tremor of excitement in the village, as did the cunning men and women who plausibly claimed to have herbs, potions, or charms which would guard against infection, particularly that inflicted by the hitherward hastening pestilence. The clergy of the parish, of course, continually counseled that the surest way of surviving the plague was to be free of sin; through God’s will, medicines would only be effective if they were taken by a blameless person. But most felt it foolish not to seek protection for the body as well as the soul.
Prominent among those who offered their services to all who could pay were the finely dressed doctors of physic who came to Walsham at the behest of the new resident of the fine moated manor house of High Hall, Edmund de Welles. Edmund, who had succeeded in 1347 to the joint ownership of the manor of High Hall with his sister Margery on the death of her husband, Nicholas of Walsham, was becoming increasingly obsessed with dread of the pestilence. Of late he had turned his attention to compiling every detail of the very best advice on how to avoid sickness and how to cure himself if he became infected. Naturally he interrogated Master John at length on what he had learned during his recent visit to the abbey of Bury, and these conversations helped focus his thoughts.
Edmund at first eagerly accepted the advice of his physicians who concluded that, since the pestilence was borne in the air in a cloud of infection, blown hither and thither by the prevailing winds, and since it infected its victims when they breathed in these poisonous vapors, sweet air should be used to combat the infected air. This he did by holding posies of flowers to his nose, especially when meeting anyone, and by ordering incense to be burned continuously in all the rooms he frequented in the Hall. However, Edmund was not inclined simply to follow the directions of his learned advisers, even the most eminent of them, and devised his own regime to protect himself against infection. Enthusiastically pushing the logic of the recommended remedies further, he noted that posies and sweet smells had not protected against the plague in Italy, France, and other parts of Europe. Therefore it seemed obvious, he reasoned, that air poisoned by the pestilence must be more potent than sweet air, just as the stink of rotting fish or bad eggs easily overwhelms the delicate fragrance of flowers and most spices. Accordingly, Edmund decided to create a foul but harmless vapor of his own to repel the pestilential air that might threaten him. This he did by ordering his servants to gather together each morning the content of all the privies in the hall, from his sister’s bed chamber as well as from the grooms’ and scullions’ piss pots, and tip them into a cavernous brass cooking pot which he had brought up to his private chamber from the kitchen. Three times each day he bent over the brimming pot with a towel draped over his head and, for as long as he could bear, he took as deep breaths as his gorge would permit. Then smiling with satisfaction, he would reflect that he had gained double immunity. First, the vapors would provide a strong antidote against the ingress of pestilence into his body, and second, the vomiting that often followed directly afterward would expel any noxious substances that managed to penetrate his defenses.
The doctors from Bury and farther afield who visited lord Edmund at High Hall often tarried to conduct a little extra business among the richer residents elsewhere in the village, but their fees were very high and few were able or willing to pay. More affordable were the less exalted practitioners who eagerly tramped the roads and paths in search of new customers. Those with homemade potions from common herbs were the cheapest, and those who could speak convincingly of the signs, points, and positions of the constellations the most persuasive. With ease these aspiring astrologers captivated their clients with fluent discourses on how the planets rule: how some, like Jupiter, are joyful, and others, like Hercules, are wrathful; how one planet is favorable when it is in the ascendant, and another when it is in decline. Also compelling were those who knew the secrets of the waxing and waning of the four humors of the body: blood, which was hot and moist and came from the heart; phlegm, which was cold and moist and came from the brain; yellow bile, which was hot and dry and came from the liver; and black bile, which was cold and dry and came from the spleen. It was obvious to all who listened that every ailment must be due to an imbalance between the humors, and that only those folk whose humors were in perfect balance could expect to resist the infection of the plague. Unsurprisingly, virtually all whom these quacks examined were found to have one or more humors which were either deficient or excessive, so they readily purchased the expensive potions which would right this dangerous imbalance before the plague arrived.
Who could afford not to do business with those who claimed to bring cures hot-foot from plague-stricken France or Italy, where they had just been discovered? Who could resist the means of deflecting the arrows of infection from penetrating the body, or of lessening their power should they strike? Finally, there were the tried and trusted local healers who had proved themselves useful in dispensing healing herbs to fight the diseases of people and animals in the past and could often be relied on to dispense cheap but powerful potions and charms to ward off all sicknesses.
As winter began to wane without any verifiable sign of plague appearing in the village or anywhere round about, the embers of hope were kindled. As far as could be discovered, plague did not appear to have strayed far from London. Naturally, caution urged against tempting fate by giving voice to optimism, and it was clearly unwise to place reliance on the word of tradesmen and merchants who had much to gain by playing down the dangers of trade and travel. But people could not stop themselves wondering whether it had been God’s plan all along to select London for extreme punishment because of the extravagant luxury and unbridled sinfulness of that city’s inhabitants. As each day passed, it began to seem ever more possible that all their prayers and processions, and their acts of mercy and contrite entreaties for forgiveness, were managing to secure a deliverance for simple, pious Walsham.
Spread of the Black Death in Suffolk
Source: Mark Bailey, Medieval Suffolk: An Economic and Social History (Woodbridge, 2007), p. 178.