[HERRING, Francis].

Rare second edition, first published 1603 ‘in the last visitation … and now reprinted for the saide Citie [of London], and all other parts of the Land at this time visited.’ The prefatory letter to Charles I points to the work being ‘somewhat enlarged,’ and newly added here is a section of advice for the poorer sort who are infected. Herring (d. 1628) was a physician and religious controversialist who published a poem in Latin hexameters on the Gunpowder Plot. In this work he took aim at the superstitious practice of wearing amulets poisoned with arsenic as a defence against the plague; the original 1603 edition prompted a controversy with the Paracelsian physician Peter Turner (1542-1614), who advocated for amulets, resulting in another pamphlet from Herring condemning them (1604). The use of such amulets may well have continued given the reappearance of Herring’s advice, which argues that Galen and other ancient physicians never advocated the use of poisons against the plague. Furthermore, there was a danger that the amulets, heated by bodily heat generated through exertion, could release noxious vapours; one example given is of a man playing tennis who, wearing such an amulet, suddenly dropped dead.

Herring attributes plague to the wrath of God. He offers a number of reactive and preventative measures against the sickness: burying victims apart from the City and on its south side, so that the sun may draw out the vapours; keeping the streets free of dunghills and cleaning the sewers; purging the air by burning bonfires of oak or ash with juniper, and placing certain herbs within houses (already Herring shows an interest in what the poor will and will not be able to afford); banning stage plays and other ‘concourse of people’; and good diet, moderate exercise and avoidance of anger or fear. The part containing advice to the poor (poverty also being divinely ordained), which appears for the first time in this edition, assumes that infection has already taken place, presumably because many of the preventative measures advocated by Herring were unavailable to them. Herring suggests a course of three sweating-medicines, each one a different combination of various flowers or herbs mixed with vinegar, which he advertises as being available for purchase from Mr. James the Apothecary. Herring also suggests binding radishes to the armpits, groin and feet. If plague-sores occur, they should be dealt with by a surgeon, paid for out of the common purse.