No one likes getting sick. Debilitating illnesses drain your energy and cause all kinds of nasty fluids to come out of your body. If allowed to spread, these diseases can decimate an entire population. As bad as that sounds, fiction is arguably worse.

Writers have fashioned countless crazy plagues across the storytelling realm. Their insane symptoms are obviously great for shock value, but what’s scarier is how plausible these sicknesses sound. When explaining the viruses, creators often use real illnesses as foundations. That inspiration aids in authenticity, but it can also make you paranoid. After seeing such believable pandemics play out onscreen, you start to question whether they could actually happen. Soon, you’ll be afraid to catch a cold.

Related: Top 10 Disaster Movie Clips Critiqued By Experts

10 Red Flu

The Last Ship (2014–2018) may seem like just a naval action show, but it really revolves around a worldwide pandemic. Dubbed the “Red Flu” by some parties, this disease stems from an ancient plant virus buried in the Arctic. Touch helps transmit it, but you can also get sick from breathing contaminated air. Once infected, you suffer from intense fevers and exhaustion. You then develop grotesque lesions all over your body before your system shuts down. The sickness works quickly and efficiently.

That efficacy lets the virus wipe out most of the globe. It easily erodes entire governments, leaving the world in chaos. As bad as that is, you might be more disgusted at what it does to the survivors. Several cultlike leaders use the crisis to frame themselves as saviors and seize power. As much as it bonds the navy sailors, strife of this scale also brings out the worst of humanity.^[10]

9 Vampirism

It’s no secret that vampires can bite humans to turn them into other vampires. It only takes reading books like Bram Stoker’s Dracula or Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire or watching TV shows like True Blood or Buffy the Vampire Slayer to understand this. However, The Strain (2014–2017) boils that process down to medical science. Rather than fangs, a tendril shoots out of the monster’s mouth and latches onto its victim. It uses this tool to suck blood, but it serves another purpose as well.

Feeding on humans injects wormlike organisms into their systems. These little parasites gradually alter their organs, transforming their targets into hairless husks. Their only purpose is to serve their higher vampire masters. Starting in New York City, this biological warfare is enough to cripple the metropolis, along with the rest of the country. Suffice it to say, these vampires are a far cry from the sexy, sparkling kind.^[2]

8 MEV-1

It doesn’t take a doctor to know that a film called Contagion (2011) concerns a plague. The title refers to a virus called MEV-1. This illness begins in fruit bats and pigs before jumping to humans. From there, infection from fellows is easy. The disease transfers through close contact. That doesn’t just refer to skin but also sweat, saliva, and breath. The ensuing pandemic is fraught with fever, fatigue, shortness of breath, seizures, and whatever other crippling symptoms you can imagine. After a few agonizing days, the afflicted die. Worse still, the virus maintains that speed on a global scale.

The sickness severely hinders the population. Legions of people are dead before they know it, and the remainder line crowded hospitals, pandemic shelters, and dirty streets. Although MEV-1 isn’t quite enough to topple governments or bring forth an apocalypse, it does breed desperation from both professionals and civilians. No one knows how to isolate the infection or synthesize a cure. Even when the doctors engineer a vaccine, they must figure out a means of distribution. Those hurdles ground the movie in uncomfortable realism, which only makes it more unnerving.^[3]

7 Cordyceps

While The Strain grounds vampires in medical science, The Last of Us (2023– ) attempts the same for zombies. This post-apocalyptic franchise sees the Cordyceps plant fungus mutate beyond anything on record. It soon evolves enough to infect humans. Starting at their brains, it slowly morphs them into feral beasts—covered in fungal growths and focused only on killing. It goes without saying that bites can transmit the disease, but dead specimens release spores, which are arguably more effective if you breathe them. In short, the human race has no chance.

It’s not surprising that this new form of Cordyceps kills most of the planet’s population. Humanity has no idea how to combat it with science, so the only option is to fight it conventionally. This desperation turns friends and family against each other. Characters must execute their closest allies or risk getting infected themselves. Such ruthless tactics are undoubtedly isolating, but they’re the only way to survive.^[4]

6 Catriona Plague

World-hopping sounds fun, but it presents a grave danger to everyone around. If travelers aren’t careful, they can introduce foreign objects into an environment, throwing off the whole ecosystem. That’s the mistake that Ciri makes in The Witcher series (2019 – ). As she jumps between worlds, she lands in a port afflicted by bubonic plague, specifically the Black Death. The residents suffer from fevers, aches, swelling, and lack of energy. A bug from this forsaken place hitches a ride on the heroine’s clothes as she teleports back, thereby heralding disaster for her own world.

The bug then jumps to a rat on a ship bound for Ciri’s homeland, and the rest is history. The sickness spreads across the Continent with little difficulty. The denizens of this medieval fantasy realm don’t have the knowledge or tools needed to combat it. Although the illness is technically nonfictional, who knows how it could mutate in the face of Elves, Dwarves, and magic? That unpredictable lethality soon fills hospitals to the brim with the dead and dying. In the end, the losses resulting from this “Catriona Plague” rival those of the war shortly before.^[5]

5 Heart Virus

This sickness differs from other entries in that it only affects one person. That may sound like a walk in the park, but try telling that to the patient. Goku, the overarching hero of Dragon Ball, contracts this mysterious heart virus shortly after returning from his space travels. It gives him the usual fever and exhaustion, but it also puts him in agonizing pain. Not only is he unable to fight, but he can’t even get out of bed. That’s after taking the cure.

The virus on its own is enough to kill him entirely. Sure enough, that’s exactly what happens in an apocalyptic future. For perspective, Goku is among the mightiest warriors in the universe. He withstands the most terrible attacks you can imagine, yet this virus puts him down for the count. Normal folks wouldn’t stand a chance against such an illness.^[6]

4 Simian Flu (ALZ-112)

The best intentions can easily go wrong. The Simian Flu originates as a cure. Namely, Dr. Rodman engineers it to combat Alzheimer’s, testing it on chimps to stimulate brain activity. When a test subject unexpectedly gives birth, her offspring shows immense intelligence. Unfortunately, this young chimp—dubbed “Caesar”—is soon on the receiving end of human cruelty. He retaliates by releasing an airborne version of the serum, granting similar sharpness to his fellow apes. What no one foresees is its effect on people.

The serum knocks the humans off the top of the food chain, paving the way for the modern Planet of the Apes series. The initial strain causes victims to cough up blood and eventually die. That alone eliminates most of Earth’s residents and power structures. The survivors appear to have natural immunity, but the serum is only gestating. The remaining humans eventually lose all higher brain functions, starting with their ability to speak. That downward spiral frees the apes to cage them like beasts. Oh, how the tables have turned.^[7]

3 Greyscale

This dermatological disease is hard to contract and harder to get rid of. Introduced in A Song of Ice and Fire, Greyscale can only transfer through direct contact. That’s a simple prospect in itself. When a swarm of infected individuals attacks you, though, it becomes difficult to dodge. Thankfully, you can easily avoid these mobs by staying out of the areas that they frequent. Such caution is in your best interest.

Greyscale equates to slow and steady suffering. It’s generally nonfatal, but it causes children to become malformed as they grow. For adults, the sickly scales spread across the body, gradually driving the patient insane. Victims have one hope for salvation, but it only brings further pain. Treatment involves carving and peeling the scales off. This process is downright excruciating. It essentially amounts to skinning a person alive. Given that degree of torture, Greyscale is more hazardous than the titular Game of Thrones.^[8]

2 Geostigma

As foreign organisms, aliens run a clear risk of infecting humans. Few invaders are more malevolent than Jenova. This extraterrestrial woman touches down prior to Final Fantasy VII. After being an unwilling test subject, her dissected corpse falls into the Lifestream: the mystical liquid infused into the planet and its people. That unholy mixture has gruesome consequences down the line.

Advent Children (2005), FFVII’s film sequel, introduces Geostigma. This sickness arises from the infected Lifestream, which spreads to the planet’s innumerable residents. Alien matter infiltrates their bodies, causing their systems to fight back with antibodies. The catch is that the bodies overcompensate and collapse. Victims then develop sores and excrete black goo before finally dying. Although anyone can contract Geostigma, it ravages the world’s children first due to their weaker constitutions. Of course, another illness inflicts much more damage in that respect.^[9]

1 Infertility Epidemic

Sometimes, the simplest problems are the most difficult to solve. Children of Men (2006) provides ample evidence of that sentiment. The Infertility Epidemic does exactly what the name suggests. It renders humans unable to produce children. While the story never states the exact cause of this disease, it actively explores the ramifications. Needless to say, they are terrifying.

Society completely collapses thanks to this single issue. Extremists incite their followers to violent tactics, and governments enact totalitarian regimes to maintain control. Meanwhile, everyday people sink into hopelessness. Human beings, like any animal, have an instinct to procreate. Taking that away not only robs them of purpose, but it also prevents the species from continuing. The inevitable endpoint is extinction. That fact makes this sickness deadlier than any other.^[10]

The dancing plague, also referred to as a dancing mania, is reported to have happened throughout parts of Western Europe. It affected people from the 14th to the 17th century. The most notable incident of this plague occurred in the summer of 1518 in Strasbourg, France, where people would drop dead from exhaustion.

10The Case Of Frau Troffea

A week before the festival of Mary Magdalene in 1518, Frau Troffea stepped out of her home and started to dance. Her legs took her this way and that. She danced all day and into the evening until she collapsed.

Muscles twitching and full of sweat, she slept for a few hours before waking and starting her bizarre dance all over again. On the third day of her dance, her shoes were soaked with blood She was exhausted, but there was no rest for her weary body.

Onlookers watched until, days later, Frau Troffea was taken to a shrine to be healed of her affliction, but it was too late. Other people had been compelled to dance in the streets. Thirty dancers quickly climbed to over 400 people who danced until their feet were raw or they died.

9Cause Unknown

As more and more people went into the streets during the month of August, their legs jerking in a kind of macabre dance, the people of the city became frightened. The dancers appeared to be mad, and onlookers debated who was to blame: God or the devil. By the time there were hundreds of people dancing in the streets, bloody, sweaty, and beyond exhausted. It is estimated that as many as 15 people were dying from the dancing plague each day.

What was the underlying cause of the dancing plague? Could it have been mass hysteria or was it an actual plague caused by a virus? To this day, no one knows what caused the dancing plague in Strasbourg and in other parts of Western Europe, but there are plenty of opinions on what may have happened.

8Paracelsus’s Opinion

Paracelsus, physician and alchemist, visited Strasbourg in 1526, just a few years after the dancing plague incident. He became the first to write about Frau Troffea, and he was the first to use the term “choreomania” to describe the dancing sickness.

Paracelsus had his own opinion on the cause of the dancing plague. It turned out that Frau Troffea’s husband absolutely hated it when she would dance. Paracelsus and some of the people of Strasbourg believed that she started her dance simply to annoy her husband.

Paracelsus broke down the dancing sickness into three causes. First, it was born out of the imagination. Second, people may have joined in the dance out of sexual frustration. Finally, there may have been bodily causes for some of the people who exhibited uncontrolled dancing. Ultimately, Paracelsus felt that unhappy wives were the main cause of the dancing plague.

7Societal Stress

One of the more probable causes of the dancing plague was stress. The dancing plague arrived on the heels of the Black Death. It appeared as though those affected were having involuntary leg contractions, something still seen in a small portion of psychiatric patients today, although to a lesser extent.

The stress may have been caused by spiritual guilt with the sufferer believing that he or she was being punished by God for various sins. There was also a lot of tension between society’s classes during this time. Top that off with poverty and hunger, and you have groups of people who are bound to break under the strain.

6Tarantula Bites

France was not the only country affected by the dancing plague. Italy also had outbreaks of the dance mania, but there, they called it tarantism. The people believed that the spontaneous dancing was brought on by tarantula bites. Those who were bitten would twitch and dance. It was said that they seemed drawn to the sea and that many died by throwing themselves into the cold depths of the water.

Even though the tarantula bite is not poisonous to humans, the last known case of tarantism in Italy was investigated in 1959.

5The Binding Cure

Different methods were used to try to cure those affected with the dancing mania. One of the more common methods involved binding.

Victims of the sickness were bound in cloths, similar to the way we wrap babies in a swaddling clothes. This prevented the victims from dancing themselves bloody.

Some of the victims also claimed that tightness around the stomach helped relieve them from the madness. A few requested to be punched or stomped on the stomach for relief.

4Darkness And Fasting

Paracelsus recommended his own cure for the dancing disease. He labeled the sufferers as “whores and scoundrels” and felt that they should be treated as awfully as he named them.

First, he insisted that they should be locked up in a dark room. The more unpleasant the room, the better. Second, the victims should fast and only be allowed bread and water.

No word is given on whether the cruel treatment worked or not, but it could not have been any worse than the exorcisms performed by the church on victims of the dance mania.

3Children’s Dancing Plague

Records show that in 1237, a large number of children were affected with the dancing plague in Erfurt, Germany. About 100 children started to dance uncontrollably. They danced all the way to Arnstadt and then collapsed from exhaustion.

The children were gathered up and were returned to their parents. Some of the children died shortly thereafter, and it is said that the rest lived out their days with a tremor that would not go away.

No one knows what caused the outbreak.

2Saint John’s Dance

A dance mania overtook Germany in the 1300s, immediately after the Black Death. Men and women took to the streets and convulsively danced, to everyone’s horror. They would leap about, foaming at the mouth, and appeared to be possessed.

The mania spread from one person to another. Some of the victims were swaddled, and they recovered for a short time only to fall into the mania once again.

Victims claimed that during the dancing fits, they were clueless to their surroundings. They heard nothing, saw nothing, but were compelled to move about, screaming and dancing, until they would pass out from total exhaustion.

1Saint Vitus’s Dance

Saint Vitus’s Dance is often lumped in with the dance manias, but it was not a true dance. While Saint Vitus was the patron saint of dancers, those affected with Saint Vitus’s Dance had a disease that caused their bodies to twitch or jerk. Now known as Sydenham’s chorea those who had the disease were taken to the Chapel of St. Vitus in the hopes that they would be cured.

The Catholic church insisted that those infected with Saint Vitus’s Dance visit the chapel. Anyone who refused to undertake the journey was excommunicated.

Elizabeth spends most of her time surrounded by dusty, smelly, old books in a room she refers to as her personal nirvana. She’s been writing about strange stuff since 1997 and enjoys traveling to historical places.

The entire span of human history has been an arms race of survival adaptations against diseases which seem to be out to completely destroy us, both as individual organisms and as a collective species. Every time we come up with a new technique to combat various communicable diseases, the pathogens responsible change and mutate, becoming better-adapted to our weapons against them. Such is the way of all of life. Theorists are even now drawing comparisons to this dynamic to describe crime, wherein criminals adopt new methods of lawbreaking, only to again be outdone by advances in law enforcement.^[1]

Life is constantly striving to outdo and overcome itself. With this in mind, there have been some pretty brutal plagues which have threatened entire civilizations on many occasions. The term “plague” is used generally here to mean any sort of pathogen which devastated a large portion of a human population, though many of the following entries, in fact, involve the plague you’re thinking of. Here are ten of the most atrocious plagues in human history, what they were, and what happened.

10 Prehistoric Plague

A great plague was believed to have happened around 100,000 years ago, during the Paleolithic period, and is thought to have reduced the numbers of humans drastically, specifically killing the very young. It’s believed that this epidemic dropped the human population Africa to less than 10,000 people, which, in a short, brutal, prehistoric world, isn’t very many.

Researchers reached this conclusion by isolating two specific genes which make apes less susceptible to some pretty brutal illnesses. In humans, one gene is gone, and the other is now nonfunctional.^[2] After the end of the pandemic, Homo sapiens thrived and spread rapidly, and this genetic change may have helped by lowering their susceptibility to certain diseases.

9 Sweden

Extremely recent studies of mass grave sites in caves in Sweden have uncovered many bodies but have also unearthed something quite terrifying: the oldest-known strain of the plague—as in the actual Black Plague, Yersinia pestis, the bacteria which wiped out much of medieval Europe in several waves. It is thought to have struck long before the historical plagues we know of, and finding it on 5,000-year-old bodies in Sweden gives that idea some serious credibility.

While the first known massive Y. pestis outbreak was the Justinian Plague, which brought the Byzantine Empire to its knees in AD 541 and continued to strike relentlessly for 200 more years, killing over 25 million people, we know it was around disrupting human societies long, long before that. Around 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, we know that human populations took a sharp decline for some reason.^[3] Researchers are now beginning to think they have the culprit—the very first Black Plague.

The bacteria is still around today—so why isn’t it anywhere near as deadly as the one that practically wiped out the remainder of the Roman Empire, or the 14th-century plague that killed as much as 60 percent of the population of Europe? Adaptation. Humans have adapted ways to fight it off since. Right now, the discovery in Sweden is the oldest strain of Y. pestis we’ve found; there might be more out there, resting in the earth.

8 Athens

Athens was struck hard by a mysterious pathogen between the years of 430 and 427 BC. Known as the Plague of Athens, the epidemic greatly disrupted their efforts in the Peloponnesian War.^[4] This plague is detailed in the famous work, the History of the Peloponnesian War, which tells of the disease wiping out more than one third of the Athenian population at the time. Thucydides, the author, described the symptoms of this brutal plague in great detail, with violent coughing, retching, and convulsions being some of the items on the list.

Researchers still aren’t exactly sure what the Plague of Athens was, but scholars in the various sciences have speculated it was possibly measles, smallpox, or a few other diseases. While we may not know the exact strain of pathogen that struck, we definitely know it did a considerable, horrifying amount of damage to the Athenian population. Though it’s surrounded in ambiguity, whatever this mean bug was is thought to have contributed greatly to the downfall of classical Greece.

7 The Antonine Plague

Starting in AD 165, the Roman Empire was rocked by a viciously brutal plague that was a dark, ominous cloud, foreshadowing things to come. Many scholars believe this outbreak to have been a case of smallpox. Whatever it was, it definitely rocked the sturdy empire at its foundations and ultimately altered the course of history. The Antonine Plague was so bad that at its height, it was killing up to 2,000 people per day in the ancient empire, and anywhere from seven to ten percent of the Roman population did not survive.

The outstretched Roman army, who lived in close quarters as they marched across Europe, was hit particularly hard, affecting Rome’s military might and ultimately contributing to a later scaling back of the empire. This also altered the tightness of the people, as they grew distant and apart, much like later plagues would also cause in various societies, especially medieval Europe. This epidemic paved the way for the Germanic cultures to take a foothold and ultimately would lead to the inevitable decline of the Roman Empire. In failing physical and economic health, Rome was in serious trouble, all thanks to a plague that ravaged its population.^[5]

6 The Byzantine Empire

Remember that first surfacing of the bubonic plague we mentioned earlier that brought the Byzantine Empire to its knees? It was brutal. It was very brutal. The Byzantine Empire is actually just really another name for the Eastern Roman Empire at the time period, and the Byzantines, while they spoke Greek and were based out of Constantinople, were still very much the Roman Empire and referred to themselves as such.

Often referred to as the Plague of Justinian for its taking place during the reign of Emperor Justinian I, this plague hit Constantinople, the heart of the empire, in 541 and then spread outward over the course of the next year to reach the full outskirts of the Roman Empire.^[5] At this time, Justinian was really starting to rebuild the Roman Empire and was making headway in military campaigns in the West in attempts to reclaim the glory of Rome. This plague stopped those efforts dead in their tracks.

In an ominous foreshadowing of what was to hit Europe centuries later, this plague, too, was brought through trade, mainly being carried and transmitted by fleas on rats. But it didn’t stop there and wasn’t limited to only the Eastern Roman Empire. The plague soon spread further to the various feudal states which had taken a foothold in Europe after the collapse of the western half of the Roman Empire. This plague ravaged Europe entirely and killed at least 25 million people. That’s a powerful pathogen.

One thing was for certain at this point of human history: Expanding trade routes and greater transportation technologies had their downfalls and brought with them millions upon millions of deaths. They would bring many more.

5 Medieval Europe

Then came the Black Death, the Great Plague. This plague began in China in 1334, and like the Plague of Justinian, it spread to Europe through trade routes. This plague was out for death, and no one could stop it. The ravaging bubonic death toll would reach peak heights in 1348 in Europe, after having traveled yet again through the Byzantine Empire, up the trade routes, and into the bloodstreams of Europe. This plague was so brutal and unrelenting that it would go on to wipe out up to 60 percent of all of Europe at the time.^[7]

This changed the European outlook greatly. Fewer and fewer people relied on prayer and began opening their minds to other things. The culture greatly adapted, and much of our great art came from the period which followed.

4 America

Then came the disease epidemics of the Americas. Smallpox first arrived in the colonies of Florida, Carolina, and Virginia in 1519 and devastated the native population after being brought by the colonizing Europeans.^[8] It reached Massachusetts in 1633. Due to the fact that the so-called New and Old Worlds were so far removed, the Native Americans had little, if any, immune resistance to the viruses of Europe, like measles, plague, and especially smallpox.

Smallpox was particularly brutal and spread to Central and South America as well, greatly infecting the Aztec Empire. In just 100 years, half the time of the Plague of Justinian, it wiped out 90 percent of the Aztec population, a drop from 17 million people to only 1.3 million. These diseases killed so many that only an estimated 530,000 Native Americans were left alive by 1900. This makes the American plagues some of the worst of recorded human history.

3 The Modern Plague

The so-called Modern Plague occurred in China, beginning in or around 1860, and was yet again another brutal epidemic that you don’t hear about much in history books. It hit Hong Kong in 1894. This plague would strike for still another 20 years, killing around ten million people.^[9] This brutal outbreak would spread to India as well.

During this latest plague, however, science isolated the cause, namely the fleas that traveled on rats, usually from ships or trade, which would bite and transfer the bacteria. It became possible to treat the disease and even prevent future outbreaks.

2 Polio

Polio hit, and polio hit hard, and there are still people alive today who remember the epidemic. Poliomyelitis is caused by the poliovirus, which aggressively attacks the human nervous system, causing all sorts of horrifying results, and has killed a lot of people, especially striking children under the age of five years old.

The epidemic hit its worst in the United States in 1952, as doctors sought every and any method to treat and cure the disease.^[10] In 1933, there were 5,000 known cases of paralytic polio in the United States, and by 1952, that number had jumped to 59,000, well over tenfold. Polio was finally stopped by the development of two vaccines against it.

1 HIV

HIV is seemingly the last massive epidemic to strike planet Earth, or it is for now, anyway. It hit hard and became widespread by the mid-1980s. As early as 1981, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States began publishing pieces and keeping an eye on a spreading virus that was taking lives.^[11] This infection was opportunistic and struck the gay community particularly hard. By June 16, 1981, the stage was set as the first man with AIDS, a 35-year-old gay Caucasian, stepped into a doctor’s office for help and ended up being admitted to the Clinical Center at the National Institute of Health. This 35-year-old man would be dead by October 28. From here, the disease would spread, and by 1986, the CDC would declare that more people in 1985 were diagnosed with AIDS than all previous years combined. This was a rapidly spreading epidemic, in a digital age with radio and television as well as computers. The disease continued to ravage the world through the 1990s and 2000s.

But humanity fought back against this worldwide bane and developed antiretroviral drugs and other treatments which at least managed to somewhat contain the virus, initially. Now, we have drugs that can do miraculous things. Two HIV-positive people can have an HIV-negative baby, and a positive partner can sleep with a negative partner and, through the help of drugs, not give the virus to the negative partner. Cures and vaccines are in the works, with diligent people working hard and creating medicine to combat this global epidemic on a daily basis. Billions of dollars have been donated to the cause. This gives us hope in our modern medicine, our ability to respond to an epidemic of this magnitude, spreading at this incredible rate, so uniformly and quickly, as we slowly trudge down the path to victory. It shows promise for the future of fighting pathogens which seek to take us out . . . but there will always be another one coming.

I like to write about dark stuff, history, and weird things.

When there was no effect treatment for most infectious diseases in the past, the best advice that medical minds could give you was the Latin phrase Cito, longe, tarde (“Leave quickly, go far away, and come back slowly”).

Fleeing a plague and sitting it out in the countryside was one of the only things most people could do. Of course, they often spread the plague to the “safe” places to which they ran. So even this had only limited success.

With everyone around them succumbing to mysterious illnesses, the people of the past had nothing to lose by trying what seem like ridiculous tactics to us. Here are 10 historic ways that people tried to beat plagues.

Top 10 Worst Plagues In History

10 Smells

Miasma theory, which suggested that illness was caused by bad air and odors, placed a great deal of faith in the power of smells to prevent illness. It was believed that removing bad smells was one way to stop disease. In 1357, the city of London threatened people with fines if they left any offensively smelly animal products or dung in the streets.

For those unable to make their environment less odoriferous, there was the option of using perfume and other sweet smells to mask the stench. However, one group of people is said to have invented a cure for the plague for less than wholesome reasons.

Four Thieves Vinegar (aka Marseilles Vinegar) was a concoction of vinegar, herbs, spices, and garlic whose strong smell was thought to prevent the plague. The recipe for this mixture was supposed to have been created by a group of four thieves who wanted to break into houses where people had died of the plague without catching it themselves. When apprehended, the thieves surrendered their secret formula to avoid being hanged.^[1]

9 Masks

Some individuals used smells to save themselves for more noble reasons than theft. Medieval doctors who dealt with plague victims were often shown wearing extraordinary beaked masks. Although they look absurd to us, they were the high-tech hazmat suits of the Middle Ages.

Doctors in their plague gear wore waxed aprons to stop blood and other bodily fluids from soaking into their clothes. Leather gloves kept them from coming into contact with their patients directly. Polished slices of crystal in their masks allowed them to see clearly but kept droplets of infectious material from reaching their eyes.

However, from the physician’s point of view, the most effective piece of kit was the beaked mask. Not knowing how diseases spread, they thought the putrid aromas of the sick actually caused illness.

So, the beaked mask was stuffed with pungent herbs and spices to purify the air they breathed. Some doctors went further by holding garlic in their mouths while examining the dying.^[2]

8 Fires

When personal protection was not enough, city authorities sought to drive out diseases by changing the air of the entire city. One of the best ways to do this was to light enormous bonfires whose heat and smoke was thought to clean the air.

When the Great Plague of 1665 hit London, an order went out from the Lord Mayor that all inhabitants of the city were to “furnish themselves with sufficient quantities . . . of combustible matter to maintain and continue fire burning constantly for three whole days and nights.” The given reason was that this had worked in the past and in other countries.

For three days, the streets were kept empty except for people tending fires and watching that sparks did not ignite nearby houses. The diarist Samuel Pepys saw fires burning throughout the whole city. Alas, they did not work in stopping people from dying by the thousands.^[3]

For a time, smoking was thought to be good for your health. After all, what could be healthier than carrying a tiny bonfire of tobacco around with you in your pipe?

7 Kill Cats

During the Great Plague, the city authorities of London also declared that there should be a culling of cats and dogs. Unfortunately, this plague was spread by rats and fleas. Without cats and dogs to keep the rat population down, it is sometimes thought that this measure helped to prolong the length of the plague.

Cats have always had it hard in times of crisis. Until the 18th century, it was a common entertainment in France to gather cats in a net or cage and hoist them over a fire to watch them burn to death. The animals’ ashes were thought to be a powerful protection against witchcraft and the cause of good luck.

There may have been some use in getting rid of cats, however. As they can carry fleas and spend a lot of time around humans, they may well have been carriers of the Black Death after all.^[4]

6 Bloodletting

Bleeding patients has been a favorite pastime of doctors for millennia. The ancient doctor Galen, who shaped medical practice for centuries, was such a fan of bloodletting that his fellow doctors mocked him for it. Once, after Galen tried to bleed a fever out of a patient, there was so much blood on the floor that they said, “You really slaughtered that fever.”

Later, doctors thought themselves much more sophisticated that Galen. Rather than simply cutting up patients and letting the blood pour out, they attached leeches to the body to suck out the blood.

Leeches were collected by individuals (usually women) wading into the water where the critters lived. The leech finders had bare legs and simply waited for the bloodsuckers to attach themselves. These leeches were then sold for a high price. Leeches were a relatively painless and risk-free way of getting some of your blood out.^[5]

Today, if you feel your humors are out of balance, most modern doctors would suggest trying something other than bleeding. On the other hand, leeches have made a comeback in certain medical uses.

10 Weird Epidemics That Remain A Mystery

5 Quarantine

One of the fastest ways for diseases to spread in the Middle Ages was on ships. People were crammed together in close and unhealthy quarters. This made these vessels the perfect breeding grounds for diseases.

Once sailors and passengers went ashore, a plague could soon spring up. This relationship between ships and disease was soon noticed, and the city of Venice took measures to stop it.

Starting in 1448, when a ship reached the city, it was forced to wait at anchor for 40 days before the crew and goods could leave the vessel. This period of 40 days gives us the word “quarantine” today.^[6] Forty is also a biblical number related to purity as when Jesus went into the desert for 40 days.

Despite being a number plucked from the Bible, the Venetians seem to have struck it lucky. Modern medicine suggests that most people suffering from the bubonic plague go from infection to death in around 37 days.

4 Cordon Sanitaire

Sometimes, it was an entire empire that took action to keep plague out. In 1770, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria set up a cordon sanitaire between her lands and those of the Ottoman Empire. This sanitary cordon sought to keep the plague out of Austria—and it worked.

The border lasted for 101 years. During that time, there were no outbreaks of plague in Austria, although they continued to occur within the Ottoman Empire.

Over a stretch of land spanning 1,600 kilometers (1,000 mi), soldiers were posted within a musket shot of each other. Along this border, people and goods could only pass at designated areas and were held there to check for signs of plague.^[7]

People were monitored for 21 days unless a plague was active on the Ottoman side of the border. In that case, they were held for 48 days. To check that fabrics and wool were not infected, they were placed in a warehouse where peasants were given money to sleep on top of them. If the peasants remained healthy, then the goods were clean.

3 Whipping Yourself

In the ancient world, it was thought that plagues were caused by Apollo shooting people down with his invisible arrows. Indeed, it must have seemed as if some divine force was randomly afflicting only certain individuals as a plague spread.

In the Middle Ages, however, it was not Apollo who was spreading disease. Instead, the Christian God was punishing people for their sins.

Flagellants were people who thought the best way to rid themselves of sin was to punish their sinful bodies. Across Europe, large groups of people gathered together to whip themselves.

In 1349, they arrived in London and put on quite the show of purification:

Each had in his right hand a scourge with three tails. Each tail had a knot, and through the middle of it, there were sometimes sharp nails fixed. They marched naked in a file, one behind the other, and whipped themselves with these scourges on their naked and bleeding bodies.^[8]

That same year, however, Pope Clement VI issued a Papal Bull against the flagellants. They were taking the Church’s right to forgive their sins into their own hands. Also, having large groups of people assemble and spray blood around open wounds was a good way of spreading disease.

2 Mercury, Unicorns, And Goat Stones

The placebo effect is amazing. If you tell people that you are giving them a medicine to treat their condition, they often report that they feel better even if the substance contains no active ingredient. In fact, if you tell them that the medication is rare or costly, the effect becomes even stronger. Belief in a medicine is a powerful part of its potency.

Early doctors may have unwittingly taken advantage of this when they prescribed exotic concoctions for their patients. In the ancient world, spices from distant lands were prized for their medicinal powers. In the 17th century, expensive drugs were still favored by those who could afford them.^[9]

Mercury, the only liquid metal at room temperature, was used by those amazed by its quicksilver properties. Others made much of crushed-up “unicorn horns”—probably the long, hornlike teeth of the narwhal.

However, one doctor thought those were nonsense cures. He found that a little bit of bezoar (a stone found in the stomachs of goats and other animals) was just the thing for the plague.

1 Live Chickens

In the 17th century, one of the cures available to the doctor who liked bezoars involved snake flesh. It was used to make small lozenges that dissolved in the mouth. For these, he suggested rattlesnakes as the best source. But sometimes, it was live animal flesh that did the trick.

The Black Death marked its patients with the formation of hugely swollen lymph nodes that turned black—hence its name. These buboes were exquisitely painful to the touch and a natural place for doctors to try out their cures. To heal the buboes, one Austrian doctor of 1494 offered a solution:

Take some young roosters, one after the other, with the feathers plucked from around the hole in the backside. Place the rooster’s rump on the bubo until the rooster dies. Repeat with another rooster until one survives.^[10]

How the rooster was held in place until it died is not described. The treatment was used for many centuries and seems to have developed from an Arabic treatment for sucking venom from bites. In that case, a chicken was cut just above its heart and the wound placed over the bite.

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