Why was the Great Plague so devastating?
In 1665, a plague ravaged England. Lasting from June until November, it reached its peak in September, when in one week 12,000 people in London died, from a population of around 500,000. The king and his court fled to Oxford, but a doctor named Nathaniel Hodges remained in London to fight the disease. He fumigated houses with smoke from resinous woods, suggested rest and a light diet, and relieved fever by giving his patients Virginian snake root. Although his favourite powders were made from bezoar stone, unicorn horn and dried toad, he found these of no use. He himself sucked lozenges with ingredients of myrrh, cinnamon and angelica root. Though none of his medicines would have been of any use, he successfully survived in London without contracting the plague. By the end of the 17th century, a more clinical and scientific approach to health, based on actual observation, gradually began to appear. This laid the foundations for the much greater progress that was to be made in the next
