Treasures evening: ‘This calamitous year’: plague, doctors and death

Join the Royal College of Physicians for an evening of pestilence, death and disaster as it marks the 350th anniversary of the contagion that wiped out a fifth of the capital's population.

On the 29 June, the Royal College of Physicians will open its doors for an evening of expert talks and displays commemorating the anniversary of London’s Great Plague of 1665. ‘This calamitous year: plague, doctors and death’ is an evening devoted to the major epidemic of the bubonic plague, which killed almost 25% of London’s people.

Learn how the plague spread like wildfire and listen to specialists in bioarchaeology and human history recreate the lives of the poor who lived at the time of the Black Death.

From the flat caps and hooked beaks of the plague doctor’s uniform, to the ‘pomander canes’ holding sweet-smelling stuffs that physicians believed would ward off the disease, find out more about this bizarre and terrifying time.

Marking the three and a half centuries since the last major outbreak of bubonic plague in the city, the event explains how far we’ve come in changes in medical practice over that time, and the influence these changes have had on life and the world.

Doors open at 5.30pm and expert lectures start from 6.30pm. Tickets include a glass of wine or soft drink.

RCP rare books librarian, Katie Birkwood, will talk about physicians and the plague, followed by a lecture more specifically on London’s Great Plague in 1665 by Dr Stephen Porter. Curator of Human Osteology at the Museum of London, Jelena Bekvalac, will give a lecture at 7.20pm on London’s bodies, plague pits and pathology.

Mix the excitement of learning with the shock of the real stories of life at the time of the Great Plague of London, delve into a midsummer’s night of history at the Royal College of Physicians.

Part of a season of events marking Plague 350 at the Royal College of Physicians.