Snail water was an 18th Century medicine devised by Dr. Richard Mead for use by the poor who could not afford more expensive treatments. Taken from the dispensary medical treatise 'Pharmacopoeia Pauperum' written by Henry Bayner in 1718, Dr. Meads recipe called for the use of snails, worms, berries and a mixture of herbs, which would need to be ingested by the patient. Dr. Richard Mead (11 August 1673 – 16 February 1754) was an English physician. His work, ‘A Short Discourse concerning Pestilential Contagion, and the Method to be used to prevent it’, published in 1720, was of historic importance in the understanding of transmissible diseases.