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Autumn Joy Vinegar of the Four Thieves Four Thieves Vinegar by Dalene Entenmann Following trade routes, vicious plagues swept through the 14th to 17th centuries of Europe, episodically killing millions. Death came within four days after the first sign of illness. The rich and powerful, royalty and elite, with proper exit papers, fled the crowded cities. The poor, who could not afford to relocate, or acquire the proper exit papers, remained behind, many to die. Once a member of a household was afflicted, the home was quarantined, no one could leave and few, except for nurses and physicians, could enter. Fear, superstition and false belief in the cause of this sickness spread as fast as the plague itself. The unscrupulous profited in the sale of remedies said to be effective when they were anything but healing. Physicians and nurses who cared for the ill and did not become ill, were said to use herbal potions, fumigations andinhalations for protection. Women healers who used herbs and potions to successfully treat the ill were, amazingly, later accused of being witches and sentenced to death. Perhaps the most famous story regarding the use and protection of herbs against this illness, concerns the four thieves of Marseilles who, during the 17th century plagues of Toulouse, France, were caught robbing the dying and the dead without succumbing to the illness themselves. "During the great plague, four robbers were convicted of going to the houses of plague-victims, strangling them in their beds and then looting their dwellings; for this they were condemned to be burned at the stake, and in order to have the sentence mitigated they revealed their secret preservative; after which they were hanged." -- Parliament of Toulouse archives 1628-1631 http://waywardwaif.typepad.com/waywardwaif/2005/11/avian_flu_virus.html |
