Black Plague Research Collection

An amazingly rich context for the legend of Four Thieves Vinegar is revealed with even minimal research.

Miscellaneous

Those capable reading between the lines of this article will understand that fleas weren’t the primary cause of “Black Death.”
How dirty and stinky were medieval cities?
This series of articles explains that beak doctors may, in fact, have been a rarity. More common garb resembled modern-day KKK outfits… Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
“The butcher would not touch the money, but had it put into a pot full of vinegar, which he kept for that purpose. The buyers carried always small money to make up any odd sum, that they might make no change. They carried bottles for scents and perfumes in their hands.”
From Robinson Crusoe writer’s 1722 plague book
How Isaac Newton Turned Isolation From the Great Plague Into a “Year of Wonders”
Soviets Tried So, So Hard to Eliminate the Plague. Literally tens of thousands of people were employed to just spoon poison into the burrows.
Medieval People Were Surprisingly Clean (Apart From The Clergy)
This article is oblivious to essential oils, but those who read between the lines will recognize tidbits like perfume, wormwood, lavender, “smoked out by burning camomile or henbane seeds,” and “scattering alder leaves around the room.” The context is also interesting when one considers that most of the article addresses a time before the Black Plague and widespread knowledge of things like Four Thieves Vinegar and the “beak doctors” whose hats and robes were soaked with smelly garlic, vinegar, and herbal concoctions and “beaks” filled with similar potions. Though there is mention of “A collection of remedies compiled in 1364 by an otherwise unknown Florentine includes several treatments…made from common or easily available ingredients, including garlic, vinegar and peach-tree leaves.”
10 Good Things We Owe To The Black Death includes the perfume industry as one of the benefits that emerged. Lots of that section will be familiar to those who know the legend of Four Thieves Vinegar.
What Caused Black Death and Could It Strike Again?
The Only Thing, Historically, That’s Curbed Inequality: Catastrophe

The Cosmic Connection

This review of the book New Light on the Black Death: The Cosmic Connection which makes a convincing case that the Bubonic Plague was caused by comets.
Here’s an article that links a piece of Halley’s comet to “Justinian’s plague” in A.D. 541-542 — the first recorded emergence of the Black Death in Europe. A chunk of the comet likely slammed into Earth in A.D. 536, blasting so much dust into the atmosphere that the planet cooled considerably, a new study suggests. This dramatic climate shift is linked to drought and famine around the world.
This video offers a provocative conjecture that an encounter between our own planet and a cometary intruder may have caused an AD catastrophe, leading to the deaths of tens of millions of human beings — the so-called Plague of Justinian. (Video embedded below.)

Another video on the subject of life (including bacteria) being influenced by electrical interactions between the earth and sun and other astronomical events and how this may have been the root source of the Black Plague. (Video embedded below.)