17th-Century Medical Books Examined in Contagion on the Page

Although reading about plagues and pandemics in previous centuries may not be top of everybody’s agenda, a new online exhibition curated by The Queen’s College, Oxford, offers a fascinating glimpse into how our ancestors tried to cope with past outbreaks. The college is well placed in this respect since its library holds a substantial collection of medical texts dating back to the seventeenth century.

Contagion on the Page is particularly strong on ‘cures’ for the plague. Among them is cold bathing, recommended by former Queen’s students, the physician John Floyer (1649-1734) who left much of his library to the college in his will, and bibliophile Theophilus Metcalfe (1690-1757). Flover was particularly keen on this approach which he outlined in his 1702 work, The Ancient Psychrolousia Revived: or, an Essay to Prove Cold Bathing both Safe and Useful. Along similar lines is Febrifugum Magnum: Or, Common Water the best cure for Fevers, and probably for the Plague (1726) by John Hancocke, who argues for the potency of simply drinking cold water — half a pint a day for children, a pint or more for adults — to help the blood circulate and thus ‘drown’ the poison…