The one entitled, Come out of her my People, lest you be the other regulations appear to have been dictated partaker of her Plagues; another, called Fair Warn- by wisdom and experience; but this was one of ing; another, Britain's Remembrancer; and many the greatest mistakes that could have been comsuch; all, or most part of which, foretold, directly mitted, and tended materially to prolong the ravages, or covertly the ruin of the city; nay, some were so and to increase the mortality of the disease. For enthusiastically bold as to run about the streets. with their oral predictions, pretending they were it can easily be conceived, that every family would sent to preach to the city; and one, in particular, submit most reluctantly to be thus made a victim like Jonah to Nineveh, cried in the streets-yet for the common good; the more especially, as it forty days, and LONDON shall be destroyed. I will often happened, that a whole house would be, in not be positive whether he said yet forty days, or this manner, doomed to certain destruction by the yet a few days. Another ran about naked, except a pair of drawers about his waist, crying day and illness of a servant or an inmate, whom they would night, like a man that Josephus mentions, who otherwise have removed to a pest-house. cried," Woe to Jerusalem!" a little before the de- consequence was, that, in despair, families would struction of that city; so this poor naked creature often break out, overpower the watchmen, and cried, "O the great and the dreadful God!" and escape in every direction; thus spreading the dissaid no more, but repeated these words continually order they were confined to check. Every artifice with a voice and countenance full of horror, a swift was used for the purpose of deluding the vigilance pace, and nobody could ever find him to stop, or of the watchmen, and when dexterity failed, bribrest, or take any sustenance, at least, that ever I could hear of. I met this poor creature several ery was resorted to, and all together succeeded to times in the streets, and would have spoken to him, such an extent, as to render the order worse than but he would not enter into speech with me, or any useless. For, a temporary confinement only inone else, but held on his dismal cries continually. creased the number of the infected, and their esQuacks and mountebanks, it will be readily cape scattered over the city unhealthy fugitives, imagined, followed in the train of prophets and who left their malady at every abiding place. As astrologers. it was difficult to ascertain when any individual whole to conceal it, it often happened, that the was infected, through its being the interest of the plague was raging in a house not closed up, which partially carrying into effect of the order produced much false confidence, and, consequently, much mischief. Not to mention the injury caused by concealment, and the objection to apply for medical aid, lest it should lead to a discovery, and, as a sort of penalty upon misfortune, a close imprisonment. The orders respecting the burying of the dead had in them somewhat of harshness, but only such as the necessity of the times demanded. Every morning before sunrise, and every night the dead-cart went its rounds; every family of the driver's bell, and throw them into the cart, was compelled to bring out its dead at the ringing which instantly proceeded to pits of tremendous size and depth, where they shot their melancholy burden, like a load of dust or bricks. No service was performed, no bells were tolled, every friend was forbidden to attend, and no spectator allowed. The funeral rites and ceremonies could not have been celebrated had clergymen been found to do the duty; for the numbers were so great, that the inhabitants of whole streets, courts, and alleys, were sometimes lying dead together it may be imagined, in too deep a slumber to obey the call of the death-bell, so that the buriers were sometimes led to infer the real state of the case by the absence of the usual tribute of a corpse, as they passed the doors. The following anecdote will give a lively idea of the state of great numbers of houses placed in the same situation. On the other hand, it is incredible, and scarce to be imagined, how the posts of houses and corners of streets were plastered over with doctor's bills and papers of ignorant fellows, quacking and tampering in physic, and inviting the people to come to them for remedies, which was generally set off with such flourishes as these, viz.-Infallible preventive pills against the plague-Never-failing preservatives against the infection-Sovereign cordials against the corruption of the air-Exact regulations for the conduct of the body in case of an infection-Anti-pestilential pills-Incomparable drink against the plague, never found out before-An universal remedy for the plague-The only true plague water-The royal antidote against all kinds of infection; and such a number more that I cannot reckon up, and if I could, would fill a book of them selves to set them down. When the infection began to spread, the magistrates consulted, to devise means for stopping, or, at least, impeding its progress. The result of their deliberations was a series of orders which appointed examiners, searchers, chirurgeons, and buryers, to each district, acting under certain regulations, and which directed the provisions of an old act of Parliament to be enforced, for shutting up all such houses as appeared to the proper officers to contain any infected person. Every house which was visited, as it was called, was by these orders"marked with a red cross of a foot long, in the middle of the door, evident to be seen, and with these usual printed words, that is so say, Lord have mercy upon us, to be set close over the same cross, there to continue until the lawful opening of the same house." Two watchmen were appointed to the front and back of each house so closed, who forbid all ingress and egress; thus leaving the wild pestilence to do its worst within a limited space, and, as it were, feeding it with a small prey, to induce it to abstain from greater. All A watchman, it seems, had been employed to keep his post at the door of a house which was infected, or said to be infected, and was shut up; he had been there all night for two nights together, as he told his story, and the day-watchman had been there one day, and was now come to relieve him; all this while no noise had been heard in the house, Many of the clergymen fled from their cures; and no light had been seen; they called for nothing, it was a novel spectacle to see ministers of all sects sent him on no errands, which used to be the chief mounting any pulpit that happened to be vacant in business of the watchmen; neither had they given church or chapel. Wherever it might be they him any disturbance, as he said, from the Monday afternoon, when he heard great crying and screaming in the house, which, as he supposed, was occasioned by some of the family dying just at that time; it seems the night before, the dead cart, as it was called, had been stopt there, and a servant maid had been brought down to the door, dead, and the buriers or bearers, as they were called, put her into the cart, wrapped only in a green rug, and carried her away. never wanted an audience, for the awfulness of the times turned multitudes to prayer, who never thought of religion before. The preacher had no sooner done than he gave way to another of perhaps quite opposite doctrine, a harmony which, however, only lasted while the plague raged. One of the earliest signs of returning health was, the separation into sects, and the struggle for pulThe watchman had knocked at the door, it pits between contending preachers. It was only seems, when he heard that noise and crying, as in the height of the disorder, when pollution from above, and nobody answered a great while; but at meeting one's neighbor was more to be dreaded last one looked out, and said with an angry quick than ever, that the churches became thinner. For tone, and yet a kind of crying voice, or a voice of it was one of the miseries of this visitation that one that was crying, "What do ye want, that ye everybody was afraid of his neighbor; who might make such a knocking?" He answered, "I am the watchinan! how do you do? what is the matter?" be walking about in apparent health, and yet, The person answered, "What is that to you? stop unknown to himself, bear about him his own the dead cart." This, it seems, was about one death, and the pollution of all who came near o'clock; soon after, as the fellow said, he stopped him. The modes in which the disease made its the dead cart, and then knocked again, but nobody attack were various; dizziness, vomiting, delirium, answered; he continued knocking, and the bellman stupor, blains, and carbuncles, were different indicalled out several times," Bring out your dead!" cations of infection; but it frequently happened, but nobody answered, till the man that drove the cart, being called to other houses, would stay no that the patient did not know he was ill till three longer, and drove away. The watchman knew not what to make of all this, so he let them alone till the morning-man, or day-watchman, as they called him, came to relieve him, giving him an account of the particulars; they knocked at the door a great while, but nobody answered; and they observed that the window or casement at which the person had looked out who had answered before, continued open, being up two pair of stairs. hours before his death, when there was one fatal sign which never failed to show that death had marked that person for his own on whom they appeared. These were pestilential characters, called tokens, minute and distinct spots which appeared on the surface of the body, and chiefly on the breast. A person, who had not the slightest suspicion of his being infected, would not unfrequently be told by a friend, who would look upon his breast for that purpose, that he had but a few hours to live. We will extract two instances of cases similar to this from the Loim Upon this, the two men, to satisfy their curiosity, got a long ladder, and one of them went up to the window, and looked into the room, where he saw a woman lying dead upon the floor in a dismal manner; having no clothes on her but her shift; butologia; or an Historical Account of the Plague though he called aloud, and putting in his long staff, knocked hard on the floor, yet nobody stirred or answered; neither could he hear any noise in the house. in London, in 1665. By NATHAN HODGES, M. D. and Fellow of the College of Physicians, who resided in the city all that time; originally written in Latin. He came down again upon this, and acquainted his fellow, who went up also, and finding it just so, who breathed without any difficulty; her warmth I was called to a girl the first day of her seizure, they resolved to acquaint either the lord mayor or was moderate and natural, her inwards free from some other magistrate, of it, but did not offer to go glowing and pain, and her pulse not unequal or into the window; the magistrate, it seems, upon irregular; but, on the contrary, all things genuine the information of the two men, ordered the house and well, as if she had ailed nothing; and, indeed, to be broken open, a constable and other persons I was rather inclined to think she counterfeited being appointed to be present, that nothing might being sick, than really to be out of order, until exbe plundered; and accordingly it was so done, when amining her breast, I found the certain characters nobody was found in the house but that poor young of death imprinted in many places; and in that folwoman, who, having been infected, and past recovery, the rest had left her to die by herself, and lowing night she died, before she herself, or any were everyone gone, having found some way to de-person about her, could discern her otherwise out lude the watchman, and to get open the door, or get out at some back door, or over the tops of the houses, so that he knew nothing of it; and as to those cries and shrieks which he heard, it was supposed they were the passionate cries of the family at the bitter parting which, to be sure, it was to them all this being the sister to the mistress of the family. The man of the house, his wife, several children, and servants, being all gone and fled, whether sick or sound, that I could never learn; nor, indeed, did I make much inquiry after it. of order. Some time after I visited a widow of sixty years of age, whom I met with at dinner, where she eat heartily of mutton, and filled besides her stomach with broth; after I had inquired into several particulars relating to her health, she affirmed herself ing her pulse, I perceived it to intermit, and upon exto have never been better in her life, but upon feelwhich proved too true a prognostic, that even after amining her breast, I found an abundance of tokens, so good a dinner she would, by the evening, be in another world. This book affords us a very near view of the subject of this article, and is of great authority, as the composition of one of the most eminent physicians of the time. His theory, with respect to the origin and nature of this malignant fever, may be erroneous and perhaps unphilosophical, but his practical notions are, in general, good; and his immense experience, during the whole course of that dismal period, renders him an undeniable witness. The following passage from his book gives us as lively a picture of the wretchedness of these times as any in the pages of the novelist. upon their tonsils, and greatly endangered their pores all night. But if in the day-time I found the In the months of August and September, the contagion changed its former slow and languid pace, and having, as it were, got master of all, made a most terrible slaughter, so that three, four, or five thousand died in a week, and once eight thousand. Who can express the calamities of such times? The whole British nation wept for the miseries of her metropolis. In some houses carcases lay waiting for burial, and in others, persons in their last agonies; in one room might be heard dy-couraged sleep, and an easy breathing through the ing groans, in another the ravings of a delirium, and, not far off, relations and friends bewailing both their loss, and the dismal prospect of their own sudden departure; death was the sure widwife to all children, and infants passed immediately from the womb to the grave. Who would not burst with grief, to see the stock for a future generation hang upon the breasts of a dead mother? Or the marriage-bed changed the first night into a sepulchre, and the unhappy pair meet with death in their first embraces? Some of the infected run about staggering like drunken men, and fall and expire in the streets; while others lie half dead and comatose, but never to be waked but by the last trumpet some lie vomiting as if they had drunk poison; and others fall dead in the market, while they are buying necessaries for the support of life. We will add to this the history of one of his own days, in which he relates the manner in which he contrived to escape infection, though daily spending hours in air corrupted by the pestilential miasmata, and visiting and handling patients in the last extremity of their agonies. As soon as I rose in the morning early, I took the quantity of nutmeg of the anti-pestilential electuary; then after the despatch of private concerns in my family, I ventured into a large room, where crowds of citizens used to be in waiting for me; and there I commonly spent two or three hours, as in an hospital, examining the several conditions and circumstances of all who came thither; some of which had ulcers yet uncured, and others to be advised under the first symptoms of seizure; all which I endeavored to despatch, with all possible care to their various exigencies. As soon as this crowd could be discharged, I judged it not proper to go abroad fasting, and therefore got my breakfast; after which, till dinner time, I visited the sick at their houses; whereupon, entering their houses, I immediately had burnt some proper thing upon coals, and also kept in my mouth some lozenges all the while I was examining them. But they are in a mistake who report that physicians used, on such occasions, very hot things; as myrrh, zodoary, angelica, ginger, &c., for many, deceived thereby, raised inflammations myself ill but twice; but was soon again cleared of Yet in the whole course of the infection, I found its approaches by these means, and the help of such antidotes as I kept always by me. But to return to the novelist, from whom, after all, we can gather the best account of this remarkable visitation, for of all the pamphlets and publications which we have consulted on this occasion, Defoe's book is almost the only one which attempts to give any picture of London as it appeared at the time to a spectator. But from the various topics on which he dwells, the various incidents and familiar examples he invents or records, the various reflections which he makes, all of which arise from a very patient and intelligent study of the subject, we can make a few selections, which, while they will serve as good specimens of the author, will instruct the reader in the real history of the plague, whether in our own capital, or in any other part of the world. He thus speaks generally of the sufferings of the infected: But, this is but one; it is scarce creditable what dreadful cases happened in particular families every day; people in the rage of the distemper, or in the torment of their swellings, which was indeed intolerable, running out of their own government, raving and distracted, and oftentimes laying violent hands upon themselves, throwing themselves out at their windows, shooting themselves, &c. Mothers murdering their own children in their lunacy, some dying of mere grief, as a passion, some of mere fright and surprise, without any infection at all; others frightened into idiotism and foolish distractions, some into despair and lunacy; others into melancholy madness. The pain of the swelling was in particular very violent, and to some intolerable; the physicians and surgeons may be said to have tortured many poor creatures, even to death. The swellings in some grew hard, and they applied violent drawing-plasters, or poultices, to break them; and if these did not do, they cut and scarified them in a terrible manner in some, these swellings were made hard, partly by the force of the distemper, and partly by" is it so with you all! are you all disturbed at me? their being too violently drawn, and were so hard that no instrument could cut them, and then they burnt them with caustics, so that many died raving mad with the torment; and some in the very operation. In these distresses, some for want of help to hold them down in their beds, or to look to them, laid hands upon themselves, as above. Some broke out into the streets, perhaps naked, and would run directly down to the river, if they were not stopt by the watchmen, or other officers, and plunge themselves into the water, wherever they found it. his mind, and he stood still like one astonished. The poor distempered man, all this while, being as well diseased in his brain as in his body, stood still like one amazed; at length he turns round. "Ay," says he, with all the seeming calmness imaginable, why, then, I'll e'en go home and die there." And so he goes immediately down stairs; the servant that had let him in goes down after him with a candle, but was afraid to go past him and open the door, so he stood on the stairs to see what he would do; the man went and opened the door, and went out and flung the door after him; it was some while before the family recovered the fright, but as no ill consequence attended, they have had occasion since to speak of it (you may be sure) with great satisfaction. Though the man was gone, it was some time, nay, as I heard, some days before they recovered themselves of the hurry they were in, nor did they go up and down the house with any asand perfumes in all the rooms, and made a great many smokes of pitch, of gunpowder, and of sulphur, all separately shifted; and washed their clothes, and the like: as to the poor man, whether he lived or died I do not remember. It often pierced my very soul to hear the groans and cries of those who were thus tormented, but of the two, this was counted the most promising particular in the whole infection; for, if these swell-surance, till they had burnt a great variety of fumes ings could be brought to a head, and to break and run, or, as the surgeons call it, to digest, the patient generally recovered, whereas those who, like the gentlewoman's daughter, were struck with death at the beginning, and had the tokens come out upon them, often went about indifferent easy, till a little before they died, and some till the moment This, however, is ludicrous, compared with the they dropped down, as in apoplexies and epilepsies following example of malignity which not unis often the case; such would be taken suddenly frequently characterized the delirium attending very sick, and would run to a bench or bulk, or any the malady, and rendered it doubly horrible: convenient place that offered itself, or to their own houses, if possible, as I mentioned before, and there sit down, grow faint, and die. This kind of dying was much the same as it was with those who die of common mortifications, who die swooning, and, as it were, go away in a dream; such as died thus had very little notice of their being infected at all, till the gangrene was spread through their whole body; nor could physicians themselves know certainly how it was with them, till they opened their breasts or other parts of their body, and saw the tokens. Among various other instances of the just horror in which every one held his neighbor, the following may be extracted: 66 A poor, unhappy gentlewoman, a substantial citizen's wife, was (if the story be true) murdered by one of these creatures in Aldersgate street, or that way he was going along the street, raving mad, to be sure, and singing; the people only said he was drunk, but he himself said he had the plague upon him, which, it seems, was true; and, meeting this gentlewoman, he would kiss her; she was terribly frighted, as he was only a rude fellow, and she run from him, but the street being very thin of people, there was nobody near enough to help her; when she saw he would overtake her, she turned, and gave him a thrust so forcibly, he being but weak, and pushed him down backward; but, very unhappily, she being so near, he caught hold of her, and pulled her down also; and, getting up first, mastered her, and kissed her; and, which was worst of all, when he had done, told her he had the plague, and why should not she have it as well as he. She was frighted enough before, being also young with child; but when she heard him say he had the plague, she screamed out, and fell down in a swoon, or in a fit, which, though she recovered a little, yet killed her in a very few days, and I never heard whether she had the plague or It We have soon after this a striking description of the general state of the metropolis, when the disease was at its height. Another infected person came, and knocked at the door of a citizen's house, where they knew him very well; the servant let him in, and being told the master of the house was above, he ran up, and came into the room to them as the whole family was at supper: they began to rise up a little surprised, not knowing what the matter was, but he bid them sit still, he only came to take his leave of them. They asked him-" Why Mr. where are you going?" Going," says he, "I have no. got the sickness, and shall die to-morrow night." is easy to believe, though not to describe, the consternation they were all in; the women and the man's daughters, which were but little girls, were frightened almost to death, and got up, one running out at one door, and one at another, some down stairs, and some up stairs, and getting together as well as they could, locked themselves into their chambers, and screamed out at the window for help, as if they had been frighted out of their wits; the master, more composed than they, though both frighted and provoked, was going to lay hands on him, and throw him down stairs, being in a passion, but then considering a little the condition of the man, and the danger of touching him, horror seized It is here, however, to be observed, that after the funerals became so many, that people could not toll the bell, mourn, or weep, or wear black for one another, as they did before; no, nor so much as make coffins for those that died; so after a while the fury of the infection appeared to be so increased, that, in short, they shut up no houses at all; it seemed enough that all the remedies of that kind had been used till they were found fruitless, and that the plague spread itself with an irresistible fury; so that, as the fire, the succeeding year, spread itself, and burnt with such violence, that the citizens, in despair, gave over their endeavors to extinguish it, so in the plague, it came at last to such violence, that the people sat still looking at one another, and seemed quite abandoned to despair; whole streets seemed to be desolated, and not to be shut up only, but to be emptied of their inhabitants; doors were left open, windows stood shattering with the wind in empty houses, for want of people to shut them; in a word, people began to give up themselves to their fears, and to think that all regulations and methods were in vain, and that there was nothing to be hoped for but an universal desolation; and it was even in the height of this general despair, that it pleased God to stay his hand, and to slacken the fury of the contagion, in such a manner, as was even surprising, like its beginning, and demonstrated it to be his own particular hand, and that above if not without the agency of means, as I shall take notice of in its proper place. But I must still speak of the plague, as in its height, raging even to desolation, and the people under the most dreadful consternation, even, as I have said, to despair. It is hardly credible to what excess the passions of men carried them in this extremity of the distemper; and this part, I think, was as moving as the rest. What could affect a man in his full power of reflection; and what could make deeper impressions on the soul than to see a man, almost naked, and got out of his house, or perhaps out of his bed, into the street, come out of HarrowAlley, a populous conjunction or collection of alleys, courts, and passages in the Butcher-row, in Whitechapel! I say, what could be more affecting than to see this poor man come out into the open street, run dancing and singing, and making a thousand antic gestures, with five or six women and children running after him, crying and calling upon him, for the Lord's sake to come back, and entreating the help of others to bring him back, but all in vain, nobody daring to lay hands upon him, or to come near him. This was a most grievous and afflicting thing to me, who saw it all from my own windows; for all this while the poor afflicted man was, as I observed it, even then in the utmost agony of pain, having, as they said, two swellings upon him, which could not be brought to break, or to suppurate; but by laying strong caustics on them, the surgeons had, it seems, hopes to break them, which caustics were then upon him, burning his flesh as with a hot iron. I cannot say what became of this poor man, but I think he continued roving about in that manner till he fell down and died. He goes on to mention a very remarkable trait, which, whether true or not, is founded upon a deep knowledge of human nature under the effects of calamity and despair. it was suprising how it brought them to crowd into the churches; they inquired no more into who they sat near to, or far from, what offensive smells they met with, or what condition the people seemed to be in, but looking upon themselves all as so many dead corpses, they came to the churches without the least caution, and crowded together as if their lives were of no consequence, compared to the work which they came about there; indeed, the zeal which they showed in coming, and the earnestness and affection they showed in their attention to what they heard, made it manifest what a value people would all put upon the worship of God, if they thought every day they attended at the church that it would be their last. The supposed historian frequently retires to his house, and shuts himself up from all intercourse, when alarmed or depressed by the objects he meets with in his walks in the city. His curiosity, how ever, still alive, leads him to spend much of his time at his window, where he continues his observation. One particular alley, within his view, at tracts his attention. Sometimes heaps and throngs of people would burst out of the alley, most of them women, making a dreadful clamor, mixed or compounded of screeches, cryings, and calling one another, that we could not conceive what to make of it; almost all the dead part of the night the dead cart stood at the end of that alley, for if it went in, it could not well turn again, and could go in but a little way. There, I say it stood to receive dead bodies, and as the church-yard was but a little way off, if it went away full it would soon be back again; it is impossible to describe the most horrible cries and noise the poor people would make at their bringing the dead bodies of their children and friends out to the cart, and by the number one would have thought there had been none left behind, or that there were people enough for a small city living in those places; several times they cried murder, sometimes fire; but it was easy to perceive that it was all distraction, and the complaints of distressed and distempered people. We can only make one more extract, which, while it conveys a vivid impression of the insecurity of life at this time, is exceedingly characteristic of the writer. A certain citizen who had lived safe and untouched, till the month of September, when the weight of the distemper lay more in the city than it had done before, was mighty cheerful, and something too bold, as I think it was, in his talk of how secure he was, how cautious he had been, and how he had never come near any sick body; says another citizen (a neighbor of his) to him one day, As I have mentioned how the people were "Do not be too confident, Mr. it is hard to brought into a condition to despair of life, and say who is sick and who is well; for we see men abandon themselves, so this very thing had a alive and well, to outward appearance, one hour, strange effect among us for three or four weeks, and dead the next." "That is true," says the that is, it made them bold and venturous, they first man, for he was not a man presumptuously were no more shy of one another, or restrained secure, but had escaped a long while, and men, as within doors, but went anywhere, and everywhere, I said above, especially in the city, began to be and began to converse; one would say to another over easy upon that score. "That is true," says "I do not ask you how you are, or say how I he, "I do not think myself secure, but I hope I have am, it is certain we shall all go, so 't is no matter not been in company with any person that there who is sick or who is sound ;" and so they run des- has been any danger in." "No!" says his neighperately into any place or any company. bor," was not you at the Bull-tavern, in Gracechurch-street, with Mr., the night before As it brought the people into public company, so |