In this follow-up to our Black Death episode, we step inside the medieval sickroom to answer a haunting question: what did people actually do to treat the plague? Without germ theory or antibiotics, medieval communities relied on the medical framework they had—humor theory, environmental medicine, and the belief that disease traveled through corrupted air (“miasma”).

We explore the remedies that followed logically from that worldview: herb bundles and fumigation, vinegar cloths, bleeding and purging, and attempts to “draw out” plague swellings with poultices and lancing. We also discuss complex apothecary mixtures like theriac, and why many “treatments” were as much about restoring control and meaning as they were about curing illness.

Along the way, we include a brief primary-source moment to hear how medieval witnesses described fea ...