Without the ability to spray the insects who invaded their homes
or even exterminators, medieval people made use something to
discourage vermin. So I think people experimented with herbs and
all sorts of things. Just it was thought in the past that people
would wear furs, and then discarded, and this is not what we now
know to be, still are decriptions in housewifery books so I
think the people of the past had to figure out something to stop
the pests. So they found through trial and error that Tansy was
considered proof against flies dried and hung about the home, or
placed in a dish; lavender, Sweet Melissa or Cedar, and
Southernwood against moths, Camphor against anything, and
pennyroyal, then as now, against fleas. They also had all sorts
of nasty things they had to deal with that we do not, our modern
sanitation was unheard in 14th Century Europe. They had open
sewers, which were mostly just a small ditch dug into the middle
of the roads. Excrement from every form of life bred all sorts
of nasty bugs and