If you thought Toronto was bonkers about bed bugs, you haven’t perused a copy of The Complete Vermin-Killer, circa 1777.

On Wednesday, Toronto will host a bed bug summit aimed at eradicating a resurgence of the vermin so severe that some experts have called it an epidemic. At least six pest control companies are presenting at the event.

But bed bug historians—yes, they exist—say that the last half-century has been deceptively bed bug-free. Explosive bed bug populations are the rule, not the exception. The pests have terrorized dwellers in most North American and European cities for centuries.

Their reactions make Torontonians today seem calm.

A 1777 English tract titled The Complete Vermin-Killer, for example, contains several prescriptions for killing bedbugs.

First on the list: Beat some gunpowder into the crevices of the affected bedstead. Now “fire it with a match, and keep the smoak in.” Make sure to keep doing that for an hour. Or until you die, whichever comes first.

Are you alive? Good. Are the bedbugs? Rats. Here’s another handy suggestion from the book: “boil a handful of Wormwood and white Hellebore in a proper quantity of urine, till half of it is evaporated; and waft the joints of your bedstead with the remainder.”

In the off-chance that Loblaws is all out of urine and hellebore, replace that concoction with the juice of wild cucumbers plus a quantity of “good tar.” Or vinegar mixed with the gall of an ox. Or the guts of rabbits, boiled in water.

As a final resort, Vermin-Killer recommends, burn some brimstone under each corner of the bed, or instead of brimstone, three ounces of Guinea-pepper. Be forewarned, however: “let no one remain in the room, or the consequences would be very prejudicial.”

Indeed. By the late 19th century, extermination methods had improved, though not by much. Mercury chloride, a corrosive sublimate, was mixed with egg whites and applied with a feather.

“Let anyone have [this recipe] that was troubled with bedbugs, if they hated them as I do,” wrote Mrs. A. V. Faulkner, who used this method, to the editor of Good Housekeeping in 1888.

Another common remedy in this period was dusting bedsheets with pyrethrum powder, a natural insecticide made from the crushed heads of crysanthemum flowers, according to a paper by bedbug researcher Michael F. Potter.

Pyrethrum is safer than most insecticides, but still toxic to humans. This fact leads Potter to mention that “although such methods may have helped, they could result in incarceration today.”

In the early 20th century, central heating caused bedbug populations to multiply, Potter notes. It’s estimated one-third of buildings in Europe suffered from bedbug infestations. The two world wars, which forced millions into cramped barracks and bomb shelters, didn’t help.

Turpentine, gasoline, kerosene and other petroleum products were sometimes sprayed throughout an affected room. Uh-oh: “buildings sometimes caught on fire if a match was struck too soon after treatment,” Potter notes.

By the 1930s, exterminators recommended fogging pest-ridden areas with cyanide gas. Sufferers could even purchase, from the friendly neighbourhood corner store, a form of cyanide gas known as Zyklon B—yes, that Zyklon B, the one used by Nazis in the gas chambers.

Sadly, but not surprisingly, several people died from unscrupulous fogging of cyanide gases.

DDT, the genotoxic insecticide that helped lower rates of malaria and other insect-born illnesses worldwide, also helped largely eradicate the widespread bed bug problem, according to Potter. DDT was banned in the U.S. in 1972, and other countries eventually followed suit. It’s still not clear what effect the DDT ban had on the current bed bug epidemic. And that pretty much brings us up to speed.

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MPP Mike Colle, who tabled a private member’s bill that would require landlords to disclose an apartment’s bed bug history, is hosting Wednesday summit at Queen’s Park.

“These blood sucking pests do not respect borders. We need a comprehensive provincial strategy to deal with this scourge,” Colle said Tuesday.

Fine, as long as it doesn’t involve brimstone.