LONDON TREACLE

Like many, I was languishing over Christmas with  a bad bout of man-flu.  Fortunately I was stationed in a lovely old house by the sea on the North coast of Scotland with only the odd seal between us and the Orkneys.  After a couple of weeks of coughing and sneezing I was casting around for a solution and was contemplating trying to mix up some  London Treacle.  This is a semi-mythical concoction developed in the seventeenth century as a treatment for the bubonic plague.***

I eventually found the recipe and was rooting around in an outhouse before being persuaded (against my better judgement) to opt for lemsip instead.  My 'If it was good enough for Samuel Pepys, it's good enough for me' argument had failed to persuade my companions of the efficacy of its ingredients:

-Oil
-Gunpowder
-Sack (a fortified wine)

I had already found the gunpowder so I suppose I can understand their anxiety - mind you it seemed preferable to those other plague preventives: 'Pomme d'amber' which contained whale vomit; the placing of a toad sewn up in a bag on your stomach or the application of 'oil of scorpion' to the boils.

One of the great advantages of being unwell was that it finally allowed time for the long-postponed creation and publication of the new The Real Tuesday Weld website - a kind of archive of the story so far.  It has been interesting to start to pull it all together - 'How time flies!' I kept thinking and it was quite nice to re-discover some things I had completely forgotten about.

Still trying to find some use for the gunpowder though..


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***The Great Plague wreaked havoc in London in 1665 and Charles II asked the Royal College of Physicians for advice. They came up with:

- Keeping the streets clean and flushed with water in order to purify the air
- Lighting fires in streets and houses and the burning of certain aromatic materials such as resin, tar, turpentine, juniper, cedar and brimstone.
-The digestion of London Treacle, Mithridatium, Galene and diascordium

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Here is their recipe for the “Plague-water of Mathias” should you need it:

"Take the roots of Tormentil, Angelica, Peony, Zedoarie, Liquorish, Elacampane, of each half an ounce, the leaves of Sage, Scordium, Celandine, Rue, Rosemary, Wormwood, Ros solis, Mugwort, Burnet, Dragons, Scabious, Agrimony, Baum, Carduus, Betony, Centery the less, Marygolds leaves and flowers, of each one handful; Let them all be cut, bruised, and infused three days in eight pints of White wine in the month of May, and distilled. 
Take of London Treacle two ounces, of Conserve of Wood-sorrel three ounces, of the temperate Cordial species half an ounce, of Syrupe of Limons enought to make all an electuary: Of they may be taken a dram and half for prevention, and the double quantity for cure."
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Which reminds me: