Common treatment for black death

Answer 1

They used to:

-Put the patient to bed

-wash the patient in vinegar and rose water

-Lance the buboes

-Apply tree resin, roots of white lilies and dried human waste to the buboes

-Cut open the veins leading to the heart and apply clay and crushed violets

-Make sure the patient ate bread, fruits and vegetables

-Make sure the patient didn't eat meat, fish or cheese. (This was because they go off quickly and smell, and smell was thought to be one of the causes of the plague.)

-Drive off all foreigners and Jews. (The Jews and strangers were thought to poison the wells to spread the pestilence.)

-Burn dead people's clothes

-Burn waste from the streets

-Mix powdered newly-laid eggshell, chopped marigold petals and leaves and treacle with a 'pot of good ale' and drink it every morning and every night.

-Place a live hen next to the swelling

-Drink a glass of their own urine every day, or, even better, of a goat's.

-Let out bad blood (bloodletting, often performed with leeches)

-Apply a warm poultice to the buboes of onion, butter and garlic

-Wear a long leather cloak with a mask stuffed full of herbs

-Kill all the cats and dogs (They were thought to cause the plague)

-Carry bags of herbs and flowers

-Live in houses sheltered from the wind

-Sat next to a blazing fire (like the Pope did for the entire duration of the plague)

-Soften the swellings with figs and cooked onions mixed with yeast and butter

-Light scented fires

And some treatments to ease the symptoms...

-Rose, lavender and bay for the headache

-Wormwood, mint and balm for nausea

-Liquorice and comfrey for lung problems.

Please note that these cures do not work, and didn't work then. The Black Plague was caused by Yersina pestis, a bacterium that was transmitted from fleas onto rats onto humans.

You can cure the plague with antibiotics if they are taken at the right time.

Answer 2

I think you are asking what stopped it in 1348. The basic thing that stopped it was hygiene and cleaning. The plague came in on ships from Asia with rats that carried fleas who carried the disease. At the time the world was a very dirty place. The streets were filled with animal waste, the insides of animals, human waste, mud, dead animals and dead people. Much of this flowed into the rivers and ran down the streets when it rained polluting the rivers and water supply. People did not wash themselves or their clothing either at this time. Rats were every where because conditions like this were perfect for rats, so the disease spread. Once a person was bitten the site of the bite turned into a black rotting boil oozing pus, but there was also an airborn plague that killed much faster. So, the combination of the two killed 3/4 of Europe. As people began to start to clean up the streets of all the filth and kill the rats the disease faded away. There is no cure for it even today.