Imagine standing in a 14th-century street. The air is thick with the smell of vinegar, rotting garbage, and something much worse. People are dropping. In just a few years, between 1347 and 1351, nearly half of Europe’s population would simply vanish. Naturally, everyone was desperate. They were looking for any possible cures to the Black Death, but the problem was they had no idea what they were actually fighting. They weren't looking for bacteria. They were looking for bad smells, planetary alignments, and divine punishment.
It's easy to look back and laugh at the absurdity of some of these "treatments." But if you were there, watching your family develop golf-ball-sized buboes in their armpits, you’d probably try the "Vicary Method" too. That’s the one where you pluck the feathers off a live chicken’s backside and strap it to your open sores. People genuinely believed the chicken would "breathe" in the poison. It didn't. Usually, the chicken just died, and the patient followed shortly after.
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The Great Miasma Mistake
The medical "experts" of the time—the guys who graduated from places like the University of Paris—were convinced of a theory called Miasma. Basically, they thought "bad air" caused the plague. If the air smelled like death, it was death. This led to some of the most famous (and most useless) cures to the Black Death involving aromatherapy.
Rich people carried "pomanders." These were basically little metal balls filled with expensive spices like ambergris, musk, and dried roses. If you were poor, you just carried a handful of wildflowers or mint. The idea was to create a "scent buffer" around your face. You've seen the iconic plague doctor mask with the long beak? That wasn't just for fashion or to look scary. The beak was stuffed with herbs to filter out the "corrupt air."
But the plague wasn't in the smell. It was in the Yersinia pestis bacteria living inside fleas, which were hitched to the backs of black rats. While people were busy sniffing roses, the fleas were jumping off their dying pets and onto the humans.
Fire and Isolation
One of the few things that actually worked—sort of—was fire. Pope Clement VI sat between two massive, roaring fires in his chamber at Avignon. He stayed there for weeks in the blistering heat. It sounds crazy, but it actually saved him. Why? Because fleas hate heat. The fires created a literal heat shield that kept the infected insects away from his skin.
He didn't know he was practicing pest control. He thought he was "purifying" the air. It’s a classic case of doing the right thing for the completely wrong reason.
Bloodletting and the Humoral Mess
Medicine back then was stuck in the past. Like, way back. They were still using the "Four Humors" theory from Ancient Greece. If you were sick, your blood, yellow bile, black bile, or phlegm was "out of balance."
To fix this, doctors turned to bloodletting. They’d slice open a vein or slap a few leeches on you to "drain the excess." When you’re already dehydrated and suffering from systemic organ failure due to a bacterial infection, losing a pint of blood is literally the last thing you need. It weakened the immune system right when it needed to be strongest.
Then there were the "topical" treatments.
- Some doctors suggested rubbing human excrement on the buboes.
- Others preferred a paste made of crushed dried toads and lily roots.
- Some even suggested drinking "potable gold," which was essentially crushed-up gold leaf in water.
Honestly, drinking gold was probably the safest of those options, mostly because it was inert. It wouldn't help, but it wouldn't give you a secondary infection like the poop-paste did.
The Rise of the Flagellants
When medicine failed, people turned to the extreme ends of religion. Since many believed the plague was a literal whip from God, they decided to beat Him to the punch. Groups of people called Flagellants traveled from town to town.
They would stand in the town square, stripped to the waist, and whip themselves with heavy leather thongs tipped with metal studs. They did this for 33 and a half days—one day for every year of Christ’s life. They thought if they showed enough penance, God would stop the plague.
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It backfired spectacularly. Not only did the groups spread the plague as they moved from village to village, but their open, bleeding wounds became breeding grounds for more infection. By 1349, even the Pope realized this was a bad idea and condemned the movement.
Searching for Scapegoats
One of the darkest "cures" wasn't medical at all; it was social. In a desperate attempt to find a cause, many communities turned on marginalized groups. Jewish populations were frequently accused of poisoning wells to kill Christians. This led to horrific massacres across Europe, particularly in the Rhineland.
It’s a grim reminder that when people are terrified and lack scientific answers, they often turn toward conspiracy and violence. None of these "cleansings" did anything to slow the plague, because the rats didn't care about human prejudices.
What Actually Worked (By Accident)
The most effective cures to the Black Death weren't cures at all—they were preventative measures. This is where we get the word "Quarantine."
In 1377, the city-state of Ragusa (modern-day Dubrovnik) established a trentine. This was a 30-day isolation period for anyone arriving from plague-infested areas. Later, Venice extended this to 40 days, or a quaranta giorni.
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Forty days turned out to be the magic number. It was long enough for the incubation period of the plague to run its course. If you were going to die, you’d die in those 40 days. If you lived, you were probably safe. This was the first time in history that a state used organized, mandatory isolation to control a pandemic. It didn't require a microscope or an understanding of germs; it just required the observation that "people from over there make us sick."
The Eyam Example
A smaller, more heroic example happened in the English village of Eyam in 1665. When the plague arrived in a bundle of cloth from London, the village priest, William Mompesson, persuaded the entire town to wall themselves in. They didn't want to spread the sickness to the surrounding countryside.
They stayed isolated for over a year. People left food at the village boundary, and the villagers paid for it by dropping coins into a stone trough filled with vinegar (which actually acted as a mild disinfectant). Hundreds died, but the plague didn't spread further into Derbyshire. It was a selfless, proto-scientific approach to containment.
Applying Medieval Lessons to Modern Health
We don't use chickens or gold-water anymore, but the history of the plague still dictates how we handle global health today. The core takeaway from the 14th century is that containment beats treatment when you don't have a vaccine.
Actionable Steps for Understanding Disease History
- Look at Primary Sources: If you want to see the real terror, read the Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio or the diary of Samuel Pepys. They describe the breakdown of society in ways a textbook can't.
- Trace the Science: Study the work of Alexandre Yersin. In 1894, he finally identified the Yersinia pestis bacterium. Understanding how long it took to get from "bad air" to "bacteria" helps you appreciate modern diagnostic tools.
- Practice Modern Hygiene: The plague still exists today in parts of the world, including the American Southwest. The "cure" now is simple: antibiotics like streptomycin or gentamicin. But the best defense is still avoiding the vectors—rodents and fleas.
- Support Public Health Infrastructure: The Black Death ended because of better housing (moving away from wood and thatch where rats live), better sanitation, and organized quarantine.
The story of the Black Death isn't just a horror story from the past. It’s the origin story of modern public health. We learned the hard way that you can't pray away a parasite, and you can't sniff your way out of a pandemic. It takes data, isolation, and, eventually, the right medicine.