Object of the Week: A fumigating torch used to drive off the plague from the 17th century

This article originally appeared on Culture24.

This week we bring you a fumigating torch which could have foiled the plague with sweet smells

Part of the upcoming Samuel Pepys: Plague, Fire, Revolution at the National Maritime Museum, this is a 20th century replica of a 17th century fumigating torch, made in brass, bamboo, solder and copper.

With no understanding of what the plague was, various methods were tried to prevent its spread. While most focused on the human body, others looked to the environment.

Fumigating torches were used in the belief that their scented smoke would drive off the plague and create a "cleansed" space for the carrier to occupy.

Sweet smelling herbs burnt in the top of torch were believed to provide protection against disease. At the time, it was thought that disease was spread through foul smelling things – the buboes caused by the disease and the breath of the dying both smelt disgusting.

Plague seemed to be passed quickly from person to person. But it was only in the 1890s that plague was discovered to be spread by the fleas carried on rats.

• Samuel Pepys: Plague, Fire, Revolution is at the National Maritime Museum, London from November 20 2015 – March 28 2016.

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More Objects of the Week from Culture24

Guy Fawkes' lantern and the relic of the eyeball of an executed Gunpowder Plot Jesuit priest

A 300-year-old witching bottle containing fingernails and hair

The incredibly rare Union flag flown on the HMS Minotaur at the Battle of Trafalgar

Source: http://www.culture24.org.uk/history-and-heritage/art540802-object-of-week-fumigating-torch-plague-sweet-smell