They represent the only significant writings on the subject by the world’s greatest scientific mind that we have been able to trace.” In the statement, Bonhams Book and Manuscript Specialist Darren Sutherland says, “Newton’s notes are essentially his take on the De Peste, including theories on its causes and speculation about cures. The rest of Newton’s plague bullpen was populated by amulets of “hyacynth” (possibly the stone jacinth), sapphire and amber, writes the auction house in the lot’s description. Newton stipulated that this was his “best” cure, suggesting it “drove away the contagion and drew out the poison,” according to Bonhams. The notes are written in Latin with some Greek and alchemical symbols. Finally, place your toad vomit lozenges “about the affected area.”Ī handwritten manuscript penned by Isaac Newton containing his notes on reading Jan Baptist van Helmont's De Peste. Next, grind the toad into a powder and mix it with the vomit until you’ve formed several lozenges. You’ll know your toad is ready when it pukes and dies be careful to collect all the vomit, which Newton describes as containing “earth with various insects in it.” The first step in the cure is hanging a toad upside down in a chimney for three days. The British polymath’s plague remedy dates to 1669, which was admittedly a long time ago-but just how bad could it be? Now, two pages of these previously unpublished scribblings are up for sale in Bonhams’ June manuscripts auction.

While working through van Helmont’s book on the plague, De Peste, the young scientist penned a proposed plague cure in his handwritten notes. When Newton returned to school in 1667, he threw himself into the medical works of Belgian physician Jan Baptist van Helmont, according to a statement from the Bonhams auction house. But as Thomas Levenson writes for the New Yorker, Newton’s achievements during the epidemic can’t be attributed solely to the magic of solitude, as is sometimes suggested, but rather to the fact that he was Isaac Newton. His period of social isolation was rife with experiments on gravity-including that whole business with the apple tree-and breakthroughs in mathematics, physics and optics. In the two years he spent isolated at Woolsthorpe, Newton, to put it mildly, got some good work done. This outbreak of bubonic plague lasted until 1666 and killed an estimated 100,000 people-roughly a quarter of the city’s population, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.Īs the plague raged through England, Newton quarantined himself at Woolsthorpe Manor, his family estate in Lincolnshire. In 1665, when Newton was a student at the University of Cambridge’s Trinity College, the school temporarily shuttered due to the Great Plague of London. You would, however, be in for an unwelcome surprise.

If someone told you that Sir Isaac Newton-the great mind responsible for the discovery of calculus and fundamental laws of physics-had also developed a remedy for the bubonic plague, you’d be forgiven for assuming it might be worth a shot.

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