Rue and Wormwood against the Plague

On 29 July 1760 a rumour ran round London, nobody could later say how, that the plague had broken out in St Thomas’s Hospital. Rue and wormwood were old household safeguards against infection, and by the next morning their price in Covent Garden market had risen by forty per cent. The hospital’s physicians, surgeons and apothecary had to put a signed notice in the newspapers declaring the report without foundation.