Rotten Remedies
1 No-one could work out what caused the Black Death… so they blamed the pets. In King’s Lynn in 1595 everyone was ordered to kill their dogs. Surprise, surprise - it didn’t work.
2 If you had toothache you tried to find someone with a strong arm to pull it out. But one 18th century doctor had a different method – he tied your tooth to a bullet, put it in a gun and fired! Ouch!
3 Feeling ill? Then your doctor might cut you to make you bleed – or stick squidgy blood-sucking leeches to your body instead.
4 One 18th century Norfolk vicar tried to cure his eye infection… by rubbing it with the tail of a black cat. It wasn’t exactly a purr-fect cure…
5 In the 19th century children were given medicine with opium in it – the substance used to make heroin, one of the world’s nastiest drugs.
6 One Norfolk Victorian ‘cure’ for whooping cough was… eating a fried field mouse. Not very ‘mice’, was it?
7 Can’t sleep? Is it just uncomfortable pillows… or have you been cursed by a witch? That’s what a man claimed in Yarmouth in 1834 anyway…
8 Dead? No problem. The monks of Bromholm Priory near Bacton had a bit of Jesus’ Cross (or so they said). The bit of wood could work miracles… like bringing you back from the dead.