Imagine standing in a London alleyway in 1348. The air smells like rotting meat and vinegar. People are dropping dead in the streets, sometimes within hours of feeling a fever. You’re desperate. You’ll try anything. Honestly, if a doctor told you to sit in a room full of fart smells or rub a live chicken on your armpits, you’d probably do it without blinking.
That was the reality of the 14th century.
When we talk about black death cures and treatments, we usually think of those creepy bird masks with the long beaks. But those didn't even show up until the 1600s. During the actual height of the Great Mortality, the "cures" were a chaotic mix of deep religious devotion, terrifying surgical guesses, and a total misunderstanding of how germs work. It's easy to laugh at them now, but these people were trying to solve an extinction-level event with the tools of a pre-microscope world.
The plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, was a biological tank. It wiped out roughly 30% to 60% of Europe’s population. Because nobody knew about bacteria, they blamed "miasma"—basically bad air—or the alignment of the planets. This led to some of the most bizarre medical interventions in human history.
The logic behind 14th-century black death cures and treatments
Medieval doctors weren't stupid. They were just working with a completely different operating system. They followed the theory of the four humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. If you got sick, it meant your humors were out of whack. To "fix" the plague, they thought they had to drain the bad stuff out.
This is where bloodletting comes in.
It was the go-to move. They’d slice open a vein or slap some leeches on you. The idea was to let the "poisoned" blood escape. Of course, this mostly just made the patient weaker and more likely to die of shock or secondary infection. If the bloodletting didn't work, they went after the buboes—those painful, golf-ball-sized swollen lymph nodes in the groin or armpits.
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Surgeons would sometimes "lance" these. They’d cut them open and drain the pus. Sometimes they’d apply a poultice made of—and I’m being serious here—dried human excrement, lily roots, and resin. It sounds disgusting because it was. While lancing a bubo occasionally helped by relieving pressure, doing it with a dirty knife and covering it in waste was essentially a death sentence.
The Vicary Method and animal "science"
One of the weirdest specific black death cures and treatments was the Vicary Method. It’s named after Thomas Vicary, a famous English surgeon, though the practice likely predates his formal writings.
Here is how it went:
- You take a live chicken.
- You pluck the feathers off its backside.
- You strap that bare chicken butt onto the swollen plague boil of the sick person.
The belief was that the chicken would "breathe" through its pores and draw the poison out of the human and into its own body. When the chicken inevitably died (probably from stress or being covered in plague bacteria), you’d wash another chicken and repeat. It did nothing. Well, it did one thing: it probably helped spread the fleas from the chicken to the human, making everything worse.
Aromatherapy as a survival tactic
Since people believed the plague traveled through "miasma" or stinking air, the obvious solution was to smell something better. Or something worse.
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Rich people carried "pomanders." These were little perforated metal balls filled with expensive spices like ambergris, musk, and sandalwood. If you were poor, you just carried a bunch of onions or herbs like wormwood and rosemary. People were constantly sniffing these bundles while walking past piles of bodies.
Then there was the "stink" theory. Some doctors suggested that if "bad air" caused the plague, then a stronger bad air might drive it away. This led to people intentionally hanging out near public latrines or filling their homes with the smell of burnt sulfur. They thought they could out-smell the Black Death.
What about the religious "cures"?
In the 1300s, there wasn't a hard line between medicine and religion. Many people believed the plague was a literal punishment from God. If God sent the sickness, only God could take it away.
This birthed the Flagellant movement.
Groups of men would wander from town to town, stripped to the waist, whipping themselves with heavy leather straps tipped with metal spikes. They did this publicly to show penance. The problem? They were bleeding everywhere and moving from town to town. They were basically a traveling circus of infection, carrying the plague in their open wounds and on their clothes.
Local governments also tried "sanitary" laws. In 1348, the authorities in Pistoia, Italy, banned people from visiting plague-stricken areas and prohibited the importation of old linen or wool. This was actually a rare moment of brilliance. They didn't know about fleas, but they noticed that "stuff" from sick people made other people sick.
Why modern treatments actually work
If you got the plague today, you wouldn't reach for a chicken or a whip. You’d reach for Gentamicin or Ciprofloxacin.
We now know that black death cures and treatments require killing the Yersinia pestis bacteria. Since the plague is a bacterial infection, antibiotics are incredibly effective if caught early. The mortality rate drops from nearly 100% (for the pneumonic version) to under 10% with modern medical care.
However, we still see "plague" in the news occasionally. It's endemic in parts of the western United States, Madagascar, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It hasn't changed. We just got better at fighting it.
The diet of the doomed
Medieval handbooks also suggested dietary changes. Doctors often recommended avoiding "moist" foods like fruit or fish. Instead, you were supposed to eat "dry" things. They also advised against exercise or taking hot baths. Why? Because they thought heat and sweat opened your pores, allowing the "pestilential air" to crawl inside your body.
Imagine being told not to wash during a pandemic. It’s the exact opposite of everything we know today.
Summary of historical vs. modern approaches
The evolution of medicine is basically the story of us moving away from the "Vicary Method" and toward the "Laboratory Method."
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- Bloodletting vs. IV Fluids: One dehydrates and weakens; the other supports the immune system.
- Aromatherapy vs. PPE: Sniffing a rose does nothing against a respiratory droplet; an N95 mask does.
- Lancing vs. Antibiotics: Draining a wound with a dirty blade introduces sepsis; targeted pills kill the source.
Actionable steps if you're traveling to plague-prone areas
While you aren't going to catch the Black Death in a Starbucks in New York, it is still a real disease in the wild. If you are hiking in areas like New Mexico, Arizona, or parts of Central Asia, here is what you actually need to do to stay safe:
- Don't touch the wildlife: The plague lives in rodents like prairie dogs, squirrels, and rats. A dead squirrel is a flea-bomb waiting to go off.
- Protect your pets: Dogs and cats can bring plague-carrying fleas into your house or bed. Use vet-approved flea control.
- Watch for symptoms: If you get a sudden high fever, chills, and painfully swollen lymph nodes after being outdoors, go to an ER immediately. Mention the word "plague."
- Don't panic: It is highly treatable now. Just don't wait three days to see if a pomander works.
The history of black death cures and treatments is a grim reminder of how far we’ve come. We moved from rubbing onions on our necks to sequencing genomes. The next time you have to take a round of antibiotics, just be glad nobody is trying to strap a chicken to your armpit.
The plague didn't end because it went away; it ended because we finally figured out how to stop being its host. Keep your distance from rodents, keep your fleas at bay, and trust the science that took 600 years to perfect.