Among the ingredients were rue, angelica, wormwood, snakeroot, myrrh, camphor, citron, rose leaves, sulphur, oil of amber, and countless others. These were to be held to the nose or used for anointing the nostrils. Boghurst listed among the antidotes of ‘little efficacy’: ‘stuffing the nose with rue, wormwood, or what else’ (Loimographia, 55).

Wine: an antidote of hoary respectability. Cf. John Lydgate in the fifteenth century: ‘Who will been holle and kepe hym from seckenesse | And resiste the strok of pestilence | Lat him … drynk good wyne, & holsom meetis take’ (‘A Doctrine for Pestilence’, The Miner Poems of John Lydgate, Early English Text Soc. (1934), pt. II, p. 702). Diemerbroeck similarly thought ‘a good Draught of Burnt Wine, with some Cinnamon and Nutmeg’ useful (Several Choice Histories … of the Plague, 34). The ‘learned physician’ who treated himself with wine and became an addict is presumably Hodges, who wrote that sack is ‘deservedly … ranked amongst the principal Antidotes’ to the plague. He describes in detail its virtues and his use of it (Loimologia, 225).

Pill. Ruff.: Pilulae Rufi, compounded of aloes and myrrh, ‘to open or keep soluble the Body, the Pills of Rufus, commonly called Pestilential Pills, are … most proper to be used’ (Necessary Directions … by the College of Physicians, 49).

Venice Treacle: ‘The Treacle of Andromachus (commonly called Venice-Treacle)’ was an electuary compounded of many ingredients and used in plague after plague; presumably it was devised by Andromachus, physician to Nero. It was commended by the ‘Medicus’ in William Bullein’s A Dialogue against the Fever Pestilence (1564) as ‘a Triacle incomperable … againste bothe poison and Pestilence’ (see Early English Texts Society edn., pt. I (1888), 42). In the Pharmacopoeia of 1682 some sixty-five ingredients are listed. It was said to be ‘not only the capital Alexipharmic of our shops, but of all Europe’. In John Quincy’s The Complete English Dispensatory (1718) an elaborate recipe is given, with the admission that ‘there are abundance of Recipe’s extant in Dispensatory-Writers’. It came to be called Venice-Treacle because of the great quantities made in that city, but Quincy defended the quality of English varieties (441 ff.).

Solomon Eagle: see fourth note to p. 20.

February … Distemper … ceas’d: in fact, death from plague continued. The Bills of Mortality reported 222 from 30 January to 27 February 1606.

Gun-powder: long considered of some efficacy in dissipating the concentration of poisonous effluvia in the air. The virtues of gunpowder were weighed by the anonymous author of Medicina Flagellata (1721) who pointed out that ‘in the late Plague at Marseilles the constant firing of Guns at Morning and Evening … was esteemed to be of great Relief to the inhabitants’ (pp. 205–6). See also fourth note to p. 67.

sweetning their Houses: see first note to p. 204. A Lord Mayor’s Proclamation on 7 December 1665 ordered that all houses in which plague had been prevalent be thoroughly fumigated and aired before occupancy.

Seeds of the Plague … destroy’d: although H.F. scorns the view of some ‘Quacking Philosophers’, that the Great Fire destroyed the seeds of the plague, a respected scientist, Richard Bradley, FRS, held it to be a reasonable hypothesis. In 1721, observing that no plague had occurred in England since 1665, he wrote that this ‘might happen from the Destruction of the City by Fire the following Year 1666, and besides the Destroying the Eggs, or Seeds, of those poisonous Animals, might likewise purifie that Air in such a Manner, as to make it unfit for the Nourishment of others of the same Kind, which were Swimming or Driving in the Circumambient Air’ (The Plague at Marseilles consider’d, 12).

never on Board the Fleet: not true, since Pepys and the Navy Office received frequent notices of plague in the fleet (see Calendar State Papers Domestic, Car. II, 1665–1666, 32, 54, 87, and passim). On 11 October John Evelyn, Commissioner for Mariners, reported to the Duke of Albemarle that the plague was spreading at Chatham and requested that the Navy Commissioners be ordered to send two hospital ships ‘for this emergent occasion’ (ibid.