500-year-old recipe to cure Black Death

Press, 2 July 1985, Page 12

500-year-old recipe to cure Black Death

NZPA-AP Muenster West Germany Historians have found a 500-year-old recipe or an egg, mustard, and bird’s beak mixture intended as a cure for' the once-dreaded plague known as the Black Death, officials said. The Black Death, transmitted by fleas from infected rats, swept Europe and parts of Asia in the

fourteenth century, wiping out huge segments of the population. Officials at the WestfalenLippe archives, in the northwestern city of Muenster, said they discovered a handwritten recipe believed to have been created between 1452 and 1493 during the reign of Emperor Freidrich 111. The recipe starts with the requirements of a nearly

hatched egg with the tip cut off. It then advises: “Let the brood run out, mix the remaining egg yolk with raw saffron, refill the egg and seal it with the shell pieces left over.” The egg then has to be fried until it turns brown, according to the recipe. It then calls for “the same amount of white mustard. some dill, a crane’s

beak and theriak,” to be added. Officials said theriak was a quack medicine popular in Europe in the late Middle Ages. Plague suferers were advised to swallow the mixture and refrain from eating anything else for the next seven hours. There is no indication whether the treatment had any beneficial effect, the historians said.