and frightful shapes, such as dragons, snakes, serpents, and devils, horrible to behold: but this I very much question the truth of; and we had no microscope, at that time, as I remember, to make the experiment with.

It was the opinion also of another learned man, that the breath of such a person would poison and instantly kill a bird; not only a small bird but even a cock or hen; and that if it did not immediately kill the latter, it would cause them to be roupy, as they call it; particularly that if they had laid any eggs at that time, they would all be rotten. But those are opinions which I never found supported by any experiments, or heard of others that had seen it; so I leave them as I find them, only with this remark, viz., that I think the probabilities are very strong for them.

Some have proposed that such persons should breathe hard upon warm water, and that they would leave an unusual scum upon it, or upon several other things; especially such as are of a glutinous substance, and are apt to receive a scum and support it.

But, from the whole, I found that the nature of this contagion was such, that it was impossible to discover it at all, or to prevent it spreading from one to another by any human skill.

There was indeed one difficulty which I could never thoroughly get over to this time, and which there is but one way of answering that I know of, and that is this, viz., the first person that died of the plague was on December 20th., or thereabouts, 1664, and in, or about, Long-acre; whence the first person that had the infection was said to be from a parcel of silks imported from Holland, and first opened in that house.

But after this we heard no more of any person dying of the plague, or of the distemper being in that place, till the 9th. of February, which was about seven weeks after, and then one more was buried out of the same house. Then it was hushed, and we

were perfectly easy, as to the public, for a great while; for there was no more entered in the weekly bill to be dead of the plague till the 22nd. of April, when there were two more buried, not out of the same house, but out of the same street; and, as near as I can remember, it was out of the next house to the first. This was nine weeks asunder, and after this we had no more till a fortnight, and then it broke out in several streets, and spread every way. Now the question seems to lie thus: Where lay the seeds of the infection all this while? How came it to stop so long, and not stop any longer? Either the distemper did not come immediately by contagion from body to body, or if it did, then a body may be capable to continue infected, without the disease discovering itself, many days, nay, weeks together, even not a quarantine of days only, but a soixantine,-not only forty days, but sixty days, or longer.

It is true there was, as I observed at first, and is well known to many yet living, a very cold winter, and a long frost, which continued three months, and this, the doctors say, might check the infection; but then the learned must allow me to say, that if, according to their notion, the disease was, as I may say, only frozen up, it would, like a frozen river, have returned to its usual course and current when it thawed, whereas the principal recess of this infection, which was from February to April, was after the frost was broken and the weather mild and warm.

But there is another way of solving all this difficulty, which I think my own remembrance of the thing will supply; and that is, the fact is not granted, viz., that there died none in those long intervals, viz., from the 20th. of December to the 9th. of February, and from thence to the 22nd. of April. The weekly bills are the only evidence on the other side, and those bills were not of credit enough, at least with me, to support an hypothesis,

or determine a question of such importance as this: for it was our received opinion, at that time, and I believe upon very good grounds, that the fraud lay in the parish officers, searchers, and persons appointed to give account of the dead, and what diseases they died of and as people were very loath at first to have the neighbours believe their houses was infected, so they gave money to procure, or otherwise procured, the dead persons to be returned as dying of other distempers; and this I know was practised afterwards in many places, I believe I might say, in all places where the distemper came, as it will be seen in the vast increase of the numbers placed in the weekly bills under other articles of diseases during the time of the infection; for example, in the months of July and August, when the plague was coming on to its highest pitch, it was very ordinary to have from a thousand to twelve hundred, nay, to almost fifteen hundred a week, of other distempers; not that the numbers of those distempers were really increased to such a degree; but the great number of families and houses where really the infection was, obtained the favour to have their dead to be returned of other distempers, to prevent the shutting up of their houses. For example :

Dead of other Diseases besides the Plague.

From the 18th. to the 25th. July,

To the 1st. of August,

942

1004

1213

1439

1331

1394

1264

1056

1132

927

Now it was not doubted but the greatest part of these, or a

great part of them, were dead of the plague, but the officers were prevailed with to return them as above, and the numbers of some particular articles of distempers discovered are as follows:

From the 1st. to 8th. of Aug., to 15th., to 22nd., to 29th.

From Aug. 29th. to Sept. 5th., to 12th., to 19th., to 26th.

There was several other articles which bore a proportion to these, and which it is easy to perceive was increased on the same account, as aged, consumptions, vomitings, imposthumes, gripes, and the like, many of which were not doubted to be infected people; but as it was of the utmost consequence to families not to be known to be infected, if it was possible to avoid it, so they took all the measures they could to have it not believed; and if any died in their houses, to get them returned to the examiners, and by the searchers, as having died of other distempers.

This, I say, will account for the long interval which, as I have said, was between the dying of the first persons that were returned, in the bills, to be dead of the plague, and the time when the distemper spread openly, and could not be concealed.

Besides, the weekly bills themselves, at that time, evidently discover this truth; for while there was no mention of the plague,

and no increase after it had been mentioned, yet it was apparent that there was an increase of those distempers that bordered nearest upon it; for example, there were eight, twelve, seventeen, of the spotted fever, in a week when there was none, or but very few of the plague; whereas before, one, three, or four, were the ordinary weekly numbers of that distemper. Likewise, as I observed before, the burials increased weekly in that particular parish, although there was none set down of the plague; all which tell us that the infection was handed on, and the succession of the distemper really preserved, though it seemed to us, at that time, to be ceased, and to come again in a manner surprising.

It might be also that the infection might remain in other parts of the same parcel of goods which, at first, it came in, and which might not be perhaps opened, or at least not fully, or in the clothes of the first infected person; for I cannot think that anybody could be seized with the contagion, in a fatal and mortal degree, for nine weeks together, and support his state of health so well, as even not to discover it to themselves; yet, if it was so, the argument is the stronger in favour of what I am saying, viz., that the infection is retained in bodies apparently well, and conveyed from them to those they converse with, while it is known to neither the one or the other. Great were the confusions at that time upon this very account; and when people began to be convinced that the infection was received from persons apparently well, they began to be exceeding shy and jealous of every one that came near them. Once, on a public day, whether a Sabbath day or not I do not remember, in Aldgate church in a pew full of people; on a sudden one fancied she smelt an ill smell; immediately she fancies the plague was in the pew, whispers her notion or suspicion to the next, then rises and goes