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our meat, but do not eat it, viz., devour it as the beasts of prey do their meat with the blood running between their teeth.

Let no man flatter himself in his feeding in this gross manner; the body so fed is prepared not against, but for, a contagion, and we have much reason to fear that if we should now be visited, such a visitation will find us half prepared for it to work upon, and consequently we shall receive the distemper with more danger.

Some people tell us of the plague being propagated by insects, and these carried from place to place in the air in an unaccountable manner, which if it were true, one place would be apparently infected as well as any other, and at the same time, as blights in our orchards frequently run over the whole kingdom. I leave those philosophers to be confuted by the physicians, who have much better and more rational accounts to give of the beginning, propagating, and spreading the infection. But that foul bodies and gross feeding make us more receptible of infection than we should otherwise be, this seems to be a truth that both sides must grant.

Temperate diet, and avoiding excesses in strong drink, which so many ways debauch not the head only but even the whole constitution, should be avoided as carefully before the plague; I say, as carefully as we should avoid conversing with an infected body in the time of the plague.

If I can give any credit to the assurances of those who lived in London in the time of the last great

plague, few of those people we call drunken sots

escaped the distemper. It is an odd way of observing on such things, and therefore I desire to explain myself. By the words drunken sot, I mean a sort of people who have by a habit of drinking to excess brought themselves to sottism, that have debilitated themselves, their bodies as well as their understandings, and are come to dozing over their drink; who make their drink their food, eat little, and sip to keep their spirits up. I need not describe what I mean by a sot; but, according to my friends' relation, these men all went off; some that drank hard, but had strong constitutions and that were not conquered by their drink, though they were often drunk, outlived it, and had not the distemper; but the others were generally carried off.

What I infer from this is, that intemperance in drinking, as it is destructive to the constitution, so it is a most dreadful induction to the plague. When the spirits are attacked by the venom of the infection, they, being already exhausted, are in no condition to defend the body, and so the man dies, of course.

We make a great stir, as I have said, about avoiding smells in time of infection, and one1 tells us, weakly enough, that the city of London was so close built in the time of the plague in 1665, that the air had not a free course sufficient to purify the streets, also that the streets were not paved, &c., which, 't is insinuated, added to the ill smells which propagated the distemper; both which as they are but trifling in themselves, so they are really false in fact; for the 1 Bradley, in his book called "The Plague of Marseilles Considered."

streets of London were paved then as well as now, and the streets that were then may be judged by the breadth and buildings of those streets which remain still, where the fire did not come, and which, though they were not quite so open and wide as the new buildings are, yet are they far from being so close as to affect the health of the city. Besides, the weakness of his inference is evident another way, viz., it is apparent that the greatest rage of the infection at the time was in the outparts, where the buildings were the same as they are now, as in the parishes of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, St. Andrew, Holborn, &c., on the west part of the town; and in the parishes of Cripplegate, Bishopsgate, Aldgate, Whitechapel, Stepney, &c., on the east and north, in all which parts the neighbourhood of the fields prevented all interruption of air; whereas in the close-built city, as he calls it, they were healthier than in any other part.

Dr. Mead, likewise, opposes his private opinion against the common experience of the town in the late plague, 1665, and against the advice of all the physicians that were then in practice, about keeping fires in the houses and streets at that time, which was used with very good success; and it was found by experience that those people who kept fires night and day in their houses, were much freer than others from infection, the heat of the fire rarefying the air, and dissipating, if not consuming, the infectious vapours or particles, call them which we will, with which the air on such occasions is supposed to be filled.

It was on this account that the citizens, by order of the Lord Mayor, and the Lord Mayor by advice of the College of Physicians, kept great fires night and day at the corner of the streets, at the gate of the Exchange, and in other public places; by which they believed, at least, the passing and repassing the principal streets of the city, where the greatest numbers of people came, was kept wholesome, or at least more wholesome than other places.

The great quantity of coals burnt in public and in private on that occasion may confute that foolish assertion of the author above mentioned first, viz., that at the same time sea coal was hardly in use. I think I need say no more of that ridiculous part than to quote a paragraph out of his book, every branch of which is contradicted by the knowledge and experience of thousands now living. His words. are as follows, viz. :

"London, at the time of the plague, 1665, was perhaps as much crowded with people as I suppose Marseilles to have been when the plague began. The streets of London were in the time of the pestilence very narrow, and, as I am informed, unpaved for the most part; the houses by continued jetts one storey above another, made them almost meet at the garrets, so that the air within the streets was pent up, and had not due freedom of passage to purify itself as it ought. The food of the people was then much less invigorating than in these days. Foreign drugs were but little in use, and even Canary wine was the highest cordial the people would venture upon, for brandy, some spices, and hot spirituous liquors were then not in fashion ;

and at the time sea coal was hardly in use, but their firing was of wood, and for the most part chestnut, which was then the chief furniture of the woods about London, and in such quantity, that the greatest efforts were made by the proprietors to prevent the importation of Newcastle coal, which they represented as an unwholesome firing, but, I suppose, principally because it would hinder the sale of their wood; for the generality of men were, I imagine, as they are now, more for their own benefit than for the common good.

"The year 1665 was the last that we can say the plague raged in London, which might happen from the destruction of the city by fire the following year 1666, and besides the destroying the eggs, or seeds, of those poisonous animals that were then in the stagnant air, might likewise purify that air in such a manner as to make it unfit for the nourishment of others of the same kind which were swimming or driving in the circumambient air. And again, the care that was taken to enlarge the streets at their rebuilding, and the keeping them clean after they were rebuilt, might greatly contribute to preserve the town from pestilence ever since."

Nothing can be more contrary to experience and the truth of fact than this whole story together or apart. (1) To say London was supplied with wood for fuel in the year 1665, and that coal was hardly in use: whereas in very little while after we found the Parliament thought 1s. 6d. per chaldron upon coals a sufficient tax for the rebuilding St. Paul's Cathedral, and all the churches that were lost by the

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