Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/252

240 bring it up again there is danger of him; but, if he once brook it, there is no doubt of his recovery by the Grace of God; provided then when the party infected hath taken the aforesaid Medicine and sweateth, if he bring it up again then you must give him the aforesaid quantity of Malmsey and grains, but no Treacle, for it will be too hot for him, being in a sweat. This Medicine is proved, and the party hath recovered, and the sheets have been found full of blew marks, and no sore hath come forth; this being taken in the beginning of the sickness. Also this medicine saved thirty-eight Commons of Windsor the last great Plague 1593, was proved on many poor people, and they recovered."

In "The King's Medicine for the Plague," a very simple herb drink, one is assured that after taking it the first day "You shall be safe four-and-twenty days, after the ninth day a whole year by the grace of God." This next remedy for the plague would hardly be found available in a great city; the poor people of plague stricken London were, one fears, never able to profit by it, as it calls for wholesale slaughter, not of the innocents, but of as harmless feathered bipeds. "Mr. Winlour," whoever he may be, who found this prescription so effectual, was no doubt a suburban gentleman with cock-chicks galore at his command:

"A Medicine for the Plague which the Lord Mayor had from the Queen.—Take of Sage, Elder, and red Bramble leaves, of each one little handful; stamp and strain them together through a cloath with a quart of White-wine; then take a quantity of White-wine-Vinegar, and mingle them together; and drink thereof morning and night a spoonful at a time nine days together, and you shall be whole. There is no medicine more excellent than this, when the sore doth appeare, than to take a Cockchick and pull it, and let the Rump be bare, and hold the Rump of the said Chick to the sore, and it will gape and labour for life and in the end die; then take another, and the third, and so long as any one do dye; for when the poyson is quite drawn out the Chick will live, the sore presently will assuage, and the party recover. Mr. Winlour proved this upon one of his own Children, the thirteenth Chick dyed, the fourteenth lived, and the party cured."

Cock-chicks, especially "running" ones, were in great demand in those bygone days; they enter into the composition of many of these "excellent receipts" either in an active or passive state.

"Cock-water for a Consumption.—Take a running Cock-chick, pull him alive, then kill him, cut him abroad by the back, take out the entrails and wipe him clean, then quarter him and break his bones, then put him into a Rose-Water Still with a pottle of Sack, Currans, and raisins of the Sun stoned, and figs sliced, of each one pound, Dates stoned and cut small half a pound, Rosemary