London Plague Doctors Abandoned Patients

1665 bubonic plague broke out in London and those with enough money got away to the country. Many of the city’s top doctors also joined the exodus, leaving working-class Londoners without trained physicians. There was no rule of the London College of Physicians that required its members to stay in an outbreak, so they could leave the city freely. Desperate residents turned to unlicensed chemists and quacks who sold secret and unregulated remedies for the plague.

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