An Old Remedy Still in Use

The journey between Rome and Naples was notorious for its beauty and its dangers. Travellers’ diaries of the 18^th and 19^th century thrill to the first sight of the Mediterranean and rhapsodise over the fertile farmland and sweet-scented orange groves of Campania. However, not only was there the ever-present threat of banditti, but to reach the ‘land where the lemon tree blooms’, the traveller had first to cross the Pontine marshes, notorious for the fever-bearing ‘vapours’ emanating from their stagnant water, which could reputedly kill a man in three days.

Both Roman emperors and popes had attempted to drain the marshes and reclaim their rich soil. But the drainage workers sickened and died, as did the monks in the monastery set up to cater to their spiritual needs and Pope Sixtus V himself after visiting the works. Even the soldiers posted to guard the road against banditti were not immune, as an English traveller noted:  These soldiers from their sickly starved appearance, hardly able to carry their musket and crawl out of their huts, seem ill calculated to encounter robbers; and, in fact, no part of the road is so infested with them as this. (Rev. Thomas Pennington, A Journey into Various Parts of Europe during the years 1818-21.)

So lethal was the air of the marshes that, abounding in wild game though they were, their only permanent inhabitants were the solitary herdsmen tending the water buffalo who flourished there.

Crossing the marshes on the causeway built on top of an ancient Roman road (the Via Appia), a distance of some 25 miles, could take the best part of a day in a slow vehicle. Carriage travellers were warned not to open the windows and to avoid succumbing to drowsiness, which could be fatal. Travellers in open vehicles were advised to cover their faces with a vinegar-soaked handkerchief and avoid the dew-fall hours of early morning and evening when the vapours were particularly bad.

Some travellers found to their surprise that the experience was far less dramatic than they’d expected. The road was good, pleasantly tree-lined with a drainage canal on one side, and the marshlands were by no means desolate but an immense green expanse of reeds and grasses with a view of mountains to the west and from time to time a picturesque Roman ruin to admire. Henri Beyle, writing up some recollections of his 1811 journey two years later (to compensate for the loss of his travel diary on the road), dismisses the danger as one of those anticipatory fears that vanishes once you’re actually on the spot. But he’d travelled in the cooler month of October and he’d drenched himself in the ‘Four Thieves’ Vinegar’, a potent remedy that all travellers carried against infection.

Of course, we know now that the real danger came not from the noxious vapours or bad air (Italian ‘mal aria’) of the marshes but from the malaria-bearing mosquitos that bred in their stagnant water. It’s very possible that the smell of the vinegar mixture (which contained garlic and camphor among other ingredients) acted as a mosquito repellent, disguising the hot sweaty odour of the traveller that would otherwise draw the insects.

Recently, to my great surprise, as I walked past a shelf of natural remedies in a local supermarket, my eye was caught by a striking illustration on a leaflet. Taken from an old advertisement for the Remède de Marseille or ‘Thieves oil’, it depicted a robed and gloved figure in one of those strange bird-beaked masks worn by plague doctors in the 15^th century. [ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague-doctor] Clearly this was Henri’s ‘four thieves’ vinegar’ and in a Vancouver grocery store of all places!

Of course, I took the leaflet and read the rather sinister little story it contained of the supposed origins of the ‘thieves vinegar’ during an outbreak of bubonic plague in 15^th century France. It’s now being produced by a small artisanal company in the West Kootenay district of British Columbia for home use as a natural antiseptic and inhalant.

I think I may try some next summer and see if it’s as effective in repelling Vancouver mosquitos as Henri Beyle found it against the ‘mal aria’ in the Pontine Marshes.