Isaac Newton proposed toad vomit as treatment for Bubonic plague in 17th century, unpublished papers reveal
The coronavirus pandemic continues to rage and afflict the masses worldwide despite unceasing attempts at curbing its spread. In the months since it has proliferated across the world and devastated lives, scientists and researchers have been working tirelessly to produce vaccines to treat the infection. In some cases, they have been alluding to pandemics of the past such as the Spanish Flu (1918) and SARS outbreak (2003) to gather more inferences into developing a cure for Covid-19. The contagion sparked various conspiracy theories and rather iffy treatment suggestions that have been circulating on the internet, although most of these have already been debunked. In what may be one of the most bizarre coincidences, it turns out one of history's greatest thinkers also made a significant contribution to a disillusioned treatment method for the Bubonic plague that struck England's capital in 1665.
Isaac Newton, the man credited for discovering gravity and instituting the three physical laws of motion, also prescribed a rather repulsive concoction as a cure for the plague. Newton's unpublished notes on Jon Baptist van Helmont's 'De Peste', a 1667 book on plague, detail a recipe for a lozenge to treat the contagion made out of powdered toad and toad vomit. Talk about a holistic approach to treatment! It may not be as fatal as injecting hydroxychloroquine or any other bizarre and potentially dangerous 'treatment hack' for the virus. But we can't help but wonder what exactly was going through Newton's head that he was left with the idea of making an antidote to treat the plague from a toad (that apple just might have hit him a little too hard on the head).
Newton was a student at Trinity College, Cambridge at the time, but his studies were interrupted by the university's closure as a preventive measure amid the 'Great Plague of London' in 1665. It reopened again, only in 1667, and Newton indulged himself in Van Helmont's work. Van Helmont was a practicing physician during the plague epidemic that befell Antwerp in 1605. The London plague had killed 100,000 Londoners between 1660 and 1665. According to Bonhams, the London-based auction house that has listed the two pages of Newtonian notes on its online auction, the polymath's analysis of 'De Peste' is the only influential record he is known to have made about the plague. The papers were of “profound importance to the Newton body of work, as well as deeply meaningful within the present context”, said the auctioneer.
“Newton’s running notes represent the only significant writings on the subject by the world’s greatest scientific mind that we have been able to trace. A timely reminder, perhaps, that there is nothing new under the sun," Darren Sutherland, Bonhams' books specialist told The Guardian. The notes may serve as a very relatable read during the present crisis and it includes annotative descriptions of case studies cited in 'De Peste.' In one such case that Newton notes, a man who touched “pestilent papers, immediately felt a pain like a pricking needle, and developed a pestilent ulcer in the forefinger, and died in two days” and inferred it with “places infected with the plague are to be avoided”. Some of Newton's potential placebos are unlikely to be adapted in treatments in the modern-day scenario, yet he wrote in his notes, “the best is a toad suspended by the legs in a chimney for three days, which at last vomited up earth with various insects in it, on to a dish of yellow wax, and shortly after died. Combining powdered toad with the excretions and serum made into lozenges and worn about the affected area drove away the contagion and drew out the poison.”
Despite Newton's prominence, this particular theory never made it into publication, and besides, upon his death in 1727, the notes became another inclusion in his enormous archive which he left to his niece Catherine Conduitt. The collections passed within the family through generations until in1872, his descendent Isaac Newton Wallop, the Fifth Earl of Portsmouth, donated his work to Trinity College, Cambridge. The university only accepted the mathematical and scientific papers and returned his controversial writings on alchemy, theology, and philosophy. These papers, along with Newton's notes on Van Helmont, were auctioned to private collectors in 1936, one of whom was John Maynard Keynes, the father of macroeconomics. And now, amid another pandemic, the papers containing musings on plague treatments from toad commit found themselves in the auction house of Bonhams. “There was never much interest in his ‘other’ writings until recently,” Sutherland added. “So, it really is a case of cometh the hour, cometh the man – with his remedies to ward off a virus that’s causing a pandemic.”
Although unfounded musings on toad-based medicines, the two pages of Newton's writing are estimated to be auctioned at $80,000 - $120,000 via Bonhams, as part of its online-only 'Essential Genius: Ten Important Manuscripts' sale, which runs until June 10. If only you hadn't been so obsessed with brewing the viral 'Dalgona Coffee', you could have tried your hand at concocting an $80, 000 worth toad-medicine.