Recipes & Preparations

Vinegar of the Four Thieves: On Plague Preparations and Survival

Four thieves were arrested in Marseille in 1722 and should, by every reasonable expectation, have been dead. They were not. What they carried — a vinegar preparation steeped with wormwood, rue, rosemary, and thyme — is one of the oldest documented herbal formulas in the Western record. A history of the preparation, its herbs, and how to make it.