This paper examines early modern plague remedies from the ducal court of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (sixteenth–seventeenth centuries) through an approach combining archival analysis, material reconstruction, and microbiological testing. Rather than treating these remedies as precursors of modern pharmacology, the study understands them as material–epistemic ensembles embedded in humoral and miasmatic frameworks.
Selected preparations, including electuaries, vinegar-based formulations, and distillates, were reconstructed using historically plausible procedures. The process is differentiated into reconstruction, reenactment, and reworking as laboratory transformation. The resulting substances were tested using standardized microdilution assays against Yersinia pestis and Staphylococcus aureus.
The laboratory is not used to validate early modern therapeutic claims. Instead, it operates as a heuristic space, making material properties and concentration effects analytically visible. Experimental reconstruction thus translates early modern remedies into a distinct evidentiary order, highlighting the tension between historical meaning and functional effect.