1870's marketing's answer to sticking "MAX" on the end of "Lemsip" (source.)
Here's the final episode of me reading aloud Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year, in which a number of returning Londoners decide to purify their houses by setting fire to them, and we learn "what befell the quacks". There's a little more to say about this passage than could be fit into the intro, so here goes. It's notable that the fictional narrator specifically pours scorn on the idea that the plague was killed off by the Great Fire of London, for example, and the dates of course back him up. Also, I looked up "Venice Treacle" as recommended by the narrator's friend Dr. Heath, and was led to this wikipedia entry for "Theriac" where I learnt that "treacle" was simply a slang word for "remedy", and so the Treacle Well mentioned by the Dormouse in Alice In Wonderland is actually pun (and here's the original:)
Whether theriac itself was a homeopathic dose of venom (literally "snake oil") or just a load of opium is contested however. And finally, I've just really enjoyed doing these, and so I'm going to do more. I thought I might want a break, but even waiting for this final episode to upload, already not just my brain but my body is reacting to the idea of suddenly stopping this routine the same way it might react to the idea of suddenly stepping off a speeding train, so moving's how I'm going to stay put.
or treacle.
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