Chronicles of the Red Cross
A chilling, clinical firsthand account of London's darkest hour, recorded in the margins of a healer's ledger.
The Blackwood Collection acquired this leather-bound journal in 1894, but its contents date back to the sweltering summer of 1665. Authored by a nameless apothecary in the parish of St. Giles, the text provides a gruesome yet clinical observation of the bubonic plague’s progression. Unlike official city bills of mortality, this personal record tracks the failure of popular remedies—from dried toad amulets to the smoking of tobacco. The later pages are particularly evocative, featuring shaky penmanship and ink-stained thumbprints, as the author describes the eerie silence of a boarded-up street. It serves as a haunting biological census of a city under siege by an invisible enemy, bridging the gap between medieval superstition and the birth of modern epidemiology.