Four Thieves Vinegar: Plague prevention
November 10, 2007
Following trade routes, vicious plagues episodically swept through the 14th to 17th centuries of Europe. Millions died from the plague during this span of time. Death was swift, coming within four days from the first sign of illness. The rich elite and powerful royalty could obtain proper exit papers to flee the crowded cities. The poor, who could not afford to relocate, or acquire the proper exit papers, remained behind. Many of the poor were lost to the plague.
Once a member of a household was afflicted, the home was quarantined. No one could leave and with the exception of nurses and physicians, no one could enter. Fear, superstition and false belief in the cause of this sickness spread as fast as the plague itself. The unscrupulous profited in the sale of remedies said to be effective when they were anything but healing.
Physicians and nurses who cared for the ill and did not become ill, were said to use herbal potions, fumigations and inhalations for protection. Women healers who used herbs and potions to successfully treat the ill were, amazingly, later accused of being witches and sentenced to death.
Perhaps the most famous story regarding the use and protection of herbs against this illness, concerns the four thieves of Marseilles who, during the 17th century plagues of Toulouse, France, were caught robbing the dying and the dead without succumbing to the illness themselves.
“During the great plague, four robbers were convicted of going to the houses of plague-victims, strangling them in their beds and then looting their dwellings; for this they were condemned to be burned at the stake, and in order to have the sentence mitigated they revealed their secret preservative; after which they were hanged.” — Parliament of Toulouse archives 1628-1631
The original formula for the Four Thieves Vinegar is found in The Practice Of Aromatherapy by Jean Valnet, a physician who has devoted his life to the study of herbs and essential oils for therapeutic use and is credited for the modern term aromatherapy. It appears in his writings as follows:
Vinegar of the Four Thieves
3 pints strong white wine vinegar
a handful each of wormwood, meadowsweet, juniper berries, wild marjoram and sage
50 cloves
2 ounces of elecampane root
2 ounces of angelica
2 ounces of rosemary
2 ounces of horehound
3 g camphor
Steep the plants in the vinegar for 10 days. Force through a sieve. Add camphor, then filter. Rub on face and hands and burn in room. Additionally, keep in small bottles for the vapors to be sniffed. Avoid contact with eyes.
Dr. Valnet’s formula for an antiseptic vinegar similar to the vinegar of the four thieves is as follows:
wormwood 80g
rosemary, sage, mint, rue, lavendar 40g
calamus, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, garlic 5g
camphor 10g
crystallized acetic acid 40g
white vinegar 2,500g
Steep the plants in the vinegar for 10 days. Force through a sieve. Add camphor, dissolved in the acetic acid, then filter. Rub on face and hands and burn in room. Additionally, keep in small bottles for the vapors to be sniffed. Avoid contact with eyes.
For a general room disinfectant, a common formula can be used as follows:
a handful each of lavender, rosemary, sage, rue and mint
apple cider -or- white vinegar
Steep the plants in the vinegar for 4-6 weeks. Force through a sieve and strain into a mister bottle. Use to disinfect the air of sick rooms or to freshen the indoor air of rooms during the winter months.
Even with the advancements of scientific research and discovery into methods of prevention, protection and cure, the plague that ravaged Europe centuries ago is still in the world. We understand that most contagious disease is spread from human to human by hand to face contact and by the droplets in the air from an infected person’s cough or sneeze. Most recently, as reported in the journal Nature, scientists have worked out the complete genetic structure of the bacterium responsible for the plague, in part from a sample taken from a veterinarian in Colorado, who died in 1992 after a plague-infested cat sneezed on him. Details of the gene map is freely available to researchers around the world in an effort to find effective vaccines for the plague.
Germs and personal hygiene were unknown in the Middle Ages. Yet, the Vinegar of the Four Thieves, considered useful in the prevention and protection for the user against contagious diseases, may indeed have been effective due to its antiseptic qualities and the practice of rubbing it on hands and face and the inhalation of it’s vapors.