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1544 came and saw Nostradamus in the great port city of Marseilles. All the evidence indicates that he was trying his best to reestablish himself as a healer of renown. Of course, the fact that there was likely a virulent sickness going on in Marseilles may have played a part in his being there. In other words, he was not looking to settle down as some stories claim, he was doing his medical duty. And he was doing it publicly, he was no longer afraid of the dread Inquisition.
Most commentators, at least in the English language, claim that Nostradamus settled in Salon and got married during this time. It certainly is a nice story. And it does result in a nice tug on the heart strings - the brave and newly married doctor having to leave his beloved wife as he races off to combat the dread plague - but there is no basis to it. Theophilus de Garencières, the author of this story, unless he got it from an earlier source, was wrong in this claim. Salon enters into the picture later.
Because he was in Marsailles he was easily reached for in 1546, the plague, the real plague caused by the Yersinia Pestis Bacterium struck the city of Aix, the capital of Provence. The plague was not the easily curable sickness it is today, it was the dread pathogen of his day. It was known as the Carbon Plague because in its early bubonic form parts of the extremities of its victims became black like carbon. It was an extremely virulent sickness, the great killer of his time. It was deadly enough in its initial bubonic form when it was transmitted by the bites of fleas. But when it spread from the lymph nodes to the blood stream and then into the lungs, it metamorphed into its deadlier cousin forms, the easily transferable pneumonic form and the totally fatal septicemic form making it truly murderous. It was the still deadly remnant of the dread pathogen that had swept through Eurasia in 1345-1351, killing between thirty to sixty percent of the population. It was the great fear of everyone to contact the dread plague.
Desperate, the citizens of Aix summoned Nostradamus. It must not be thought that they were summoning just him, doubtless they summoned every doctor they could who was within reach. But what matters here is that Nostradamus responded! He had no edge like he had against other sicknesses, no doctor had any advantage. Virtually nothing was known. All that even medicine knew was mainly hearsay and rumor -- the plague had a tendency to kill those who were trying to observe it. Any and every doctor who went to Aix literally went at risk of their lives, the majority either died or emerged too badly damaged to ever practice medicine again.
It must be pointed out that this outbreak was not limited to just Aix. It hit other cities as well, including Montpellier where one of the leading teachers, Guillaume Rondelet, who had once scratched Nostradamus from the rolls, almost lost everything when the university was forced to close its doors for a time. Nostradamus could have gone to many cities to battle it. But Aix was the capitol of Provence, it seems he was duty bound to go there.
Here began what would be his one and only battle against the real plague. Here his studies in Montpellier and his studies during his early medical days were put to the ultimate test. All of the advanced scientific methodology learned at the Faculté de Médecin in Montpellier, and in his early years healing the sick and injured, he used to the utmost.
The situation in Aix was beyond miserable. All hope was gone. Looting was rampant. The civil authorities were helpless. And there was good reason for this because rich and poor, young and old were all falling to the dread pathogen. How many times did the good doctor have to dodge to avoid a body casually tossed out the window to be collected by the death carts? And how many were actually buried? Many homes were standing empty, silent testimony of the effectiveness of the dread plague. Shops, normally bustling with life and commerce stood empty, their doors closed, their windows shuttered because there were no customers. One out of every three people were dead and more were dying all the time.
The hospitals were scenes from a modern day disaster movie. Many of the staff were dead, the rest were working themselves to the bone with the number of patients they had. Hospitals that could cope with the normal patient load for a city the size of Aix were not only decimated, they were overwhelmed – patients lay on the ground while doctors tried to step over them and deal with them as best they could. And the doctors and staff did what they could to protect themselves. The clothing and masks they wore, filled with garlic and other herbs to attempt to prevent the spread of the contagion, were early attempts at modern day gas masks and protective bodysuits that could only be achieved in the modern days. They sweated and starved to protect themselves just like the modern day version would do wearing gas masks and full body protection suits. This showed that the doctors of that day had a basic understanding how the dread plague was transferred, but their efforts to protect themselves were for naught.
This was the situation that Doctor Michael Nostradamus found when he started his work in Aix which he remained in for over two hundred days. To go there was to risk his life. But as a doctor, he was duty bound to aid the sick and the dying to the best of his ability. And he was trained in the best traditions of the day, traditions that were already laying the foundation for the medical revolutions that were to come. In Aix he utilized these traditions to the utmost. Observing, studying, analyzing, he spent a long time learning the ways of the sickness before he even began trying to make up a cure. Then, who knows how many times his attempts at a cure failed.
His observations of the plague, courageously obtained from direct observation, indicated to the doctor that the plague entered the body through the nasal passages. He did not observe the blackened pustules or the blackened extremities, markings that are famous signs of the deadly plague in its bubonic form. This observation allows us to understand the stage the plague was in. By the time Nostradamus had entered Aix, it was no longer being spread by the bites of fleas. It has already entered the lungs of a poor soul and was now in its murderous pneumonic form, spread through the air, with outbreaks of the lethal septicemic form obviously rampant. In other words, he arrived when the plague was at its deadliest. These observations would color his judgment and influence his search for a cure. As his observations strongly indicated that the plague entered the body via the nasal passages, he reasoned, quite understandably, that anything which strengthened the nasal passages would be effective. His search was therefore focused on attempting to prevent the plague from entering the body in the first place.
The so-called deterrent he came up with was a type of troche, put in the mouth. Among its ingredients were the distillates of Iris of Florence and Cyprus wood, cloves, sweet flag lingi aloes and the petals of roses. According to his notes, all who used it never got sick. They remained healthy the whole time.
Uncritical proponents of Nostradamus claim that this troche was a cure, or more appropriately a preventative. Yet a critical look at the troche indicates that it was no preventative, no cure. Yes, some of the herbs do stimulate and relax the nasal passages, which can be beneficial in its own right. If the plague had enter the body directly through the nasal passages, as Nostradamus believed, the troche could have been of great benefit. But we know that in the pneumonic form the plague does not enter the body through the nasal passage. Instead it travels through the nasal passages and through the bronchial tube before it reaches the lungs where it enters the body through the bronchial sacs. The troche could not prevent this, in fact it is not designed to prevent it.
Nostradamus had come to Aix after the plague had metamorphed into the pneumonic form. He spent several months studying the plague and more months trying to come up with a solution. And during this time the progression of the plague continued to the bitter end. Yes, everyone who used this troche did not die, but this was not due to the cure Nostradamus gave but rather to the fact that the plague was burning itself out. Its time was up in Aix; it had done its dirty work. The survivors were now resistant to it. It was over.
But Nostradamus, schooled in the best medical and scientific methods of the early sixteenth century, excellent methods that, as they developed would inevitably lead to the likes of Louis Pasteur, would not know this. In his mind, he would have come up with a cure for the plague. And this sincerity is backed by his long time in the city of Aix struggling with the deadly pathogen. Nostradamus definitely went into the homes of the sick and dying, he made copious notes on the progression of the disease and he labored long and hard trying to find something that would work. He definitely observed the plague during its deadly pneumonic form, his observations, his known notes and his claims about the troche demand this. It is beyond a doubt he risked his life fighting the plague in its most virulent form. It is known that the people of Aix were very thankful to the doctor because they voted him a lifelong pension for his work in the city.
I must point out that it may be that Nostradamus was not the only one who was granted a lifetime pension for his work in Aix. It is likely that all of the surviving doctors may have received such a pension. If this is true, then the pension Nostradamus gained was not because the people thought he had a cure but rather because they recognized that he had risked his life, exhausted himself and fought to the best of his abilities. This is the most plausible reality. And this he certainly did.
After the struggle in Aix came a fight with a sickness in Lyons, the largest city of southern France. What this sickness was is unknown. Traditionalists claim it was another case of the plague. Skeptics counter it was a case of Whooping Cough. Unfortunately for both claims, neither considers what Doctor Nostradamus actually said about the sickness. And this refusal to even check to see what the doctor said is stupidity in itself because in this case what he wrote is highly instructive. Nostradamus did not claim it was the plague, as his supporters claimed. He also does not claim that it was some unknown condition, a claim he would have had to make if it was Whooping Cough because that sickness was unknown in those days. What he does say, the only thing he said about the sickness in Lyons, was that he was able to bring the “pestilence” under control through mass prescriptions which were ably filled by one of the local pharmacists. Nostradamus gives us the name of the pharmacist: René Hepiliervard, because Nostradamus gave ready credit to him, his skill and his willingness to do what he could. Therefore, we do not know what the sickness was but we do know that Nostradamus recognized and dealt with it using the means available in those days. It was not the dread pathogen, the plague, or the unknown sickness Whooping Cough. Instead it was something that any doctor of medicine in his day would have recognized and, if he had a decent education, be able to deal with.
A modern critic who talks bigger than he thinks and who definitely is into self-aggrandizement instead of honest criticism has presented the claim, totally laughable, that Nostradamus, being nothing but an attention seeking apothecary, went into the city of Aix and pretended to fight the sickness in order to gain fame. The statement itself is enough to prove to people with sufficient understanding that it is completely false. A simple understanding of the Plague, it’s effects and it’s mortality rate, is sufficient to provide this understanding.
The Yersinia Pestis bacterium entered Europe for the first time in the year 1343 in the Crimea. Its spread was slow for a few years but by 1347 it had gotten a foothold across the Caucasian Mountains, in the city of Constantinople, the city of Marseilles, the toe of the Italian boot and in the isles of the Mediterranean. By 1348 it was spreading up the boot, into France and Spain and up the Balkan Peninsula. By 1349 it had consumed much of modern day France, Spain, Portugal and Italy and was rapidly entering Germany, Austria, England and was approaching Poland. It hit Scandinavia and Kiev by 1350 and finished its dirty work by 1353 as it consumed all of Russia.
The plague was murderous. Whole communities perished. People who were infected laid down in their graves because they felt they would have nobody to bury them when they died. Laborers, women, children, all perished. It is estimated that up to 60% of the population of Europe was devastated by the spread of the Plague.
This sounds like words to the average reader, so just think about it. Think about the community you live in, the people you know, the friends you have. Now, imagine that in a period of two years, 60% of them suddenly die, with either black buboes visible on the skin, constant bleeding or ceaseless coughing up of blood. Go on. Think about it. You will quickly get a funny feeling about it, especially as it could be you who has the black buboes, the coughing of blood or the constant bleeding. This is the work of the Yersinia Pestis bacterium. This is the dread Plague.
When the plague first strikes, it is almost always in its bubonic form. This is because between communities the plague travels via other animals, most notably rats and birds, and is transmitted via the bites of fleas. The victim develops blackened buboes, visible on the skin. So far, it is not too deadly. True, the victim is all but dead without modern antibiotics but the sickness is still containable. Simply do the non-Christian thing and isolate the sick person till he is dead, then either freeze the body so it can be safely buried or burn it. Of course a small number survive the plague in its bubonic form but for them their fingers, toes or other bodily parts can be destroyed, turned black and lifeless.
But, once someone who was infected started to cough up blood, or if someone who had the infection in their lungs arrived, it was over for that community. Now it was not spread by the bites of fleas but by tiny droplets in the air. Though the bacterium cannot live long in the air, it does not need to while it is spreading in a community. Now people simply need to breath in order to be infected, this makes the plague even more deadly. It would spread throughout the community like wildfire, infecting everyone who had not been already infected. About the only hope for someone was that somehow they do not contact it.
Apothecary Nostradamus would not have known anything about how the plague would be transmitted. He would have no training, no means to know what he was observing. In fact, if attention was what he was seeking, he certainly would not have gone to Aix where his chance of contacting the disease and dying was approximately sixty percent – the only attention he could have reasonably gotten was that of the Yersinia Pestis bacterium, or as would be claimed in that mystical day and age, the attention of Death Itself! Anyone who went there was literally risking their lives. To expose themselves to the plague without a very good reason was foolishness to the extreme. Apothecary Nostradamus would have no legitimate reason to go anywhere near the plague. In fact, he would have every reason to make sure he was far away from wherever the plague was.
But Doctor Nostradamus, trained in the finest traditions of Montpellier, would have a duty to make an appearance in Aix. He would be duty bound by the Oath of Hippocrates to risk his life in fighting the dread pathogen, for that is what it was. He would be bound to write down his observations and then to experiment and try to find a cure, as best he could. As a practitioner of medicine he would know the incredible risk he was taking yet he would have to do it anyway. His oath, to cure all he can, to heal all the injuries he could, even to aid those who were dying to die a dignified death, all these would demand that he travel into the maw of the plague. Doctor Nostradamus would have no other realistic choice.
Whether or not you believe that Nostradamus saw the future, you must agree with noted critic Edgar Leoni and admit that the evidence demands that Doctor Nostradamus risked his life in fighting the plague. Attention seeking Apothecary Nostradamus is merely the imagining of a critic who does not know how to be critical.