in company with any person that there has been any danger in.’ ‘No?’
says his neighbour. ‘Was not you at the Bull Head Tavern in
Gracechurch Street with Mr – the night before last?’ ‘Yes,’ says the
first, ‘I was; but there was nobody there that we had any reason to
think dangerous.’ Upon which his neighbour said no more, being
unwilling to surprise him; but this made him more inquisitive, and as
his neighbour appeared backward, he was the more impatient, and in a
kind of warmth says he aloud, ‘Why, he is not dead, is he?’ Upon
which his neighbour still was silent, but cast up his eyes and said
something to himself; at which the first citizen turned pale, and said
no more but this, ‘Then I am a dead man too’, and went home
immediately and sent for a neighbouring apothecary to give him
something preventive, for he had not yet found himself ill; but the
apothecary, opening his breast, fetched a sigh, and said no more but
this, ‘Look up to God’; and the man died in a few hours.
Now let any man judge from a case like this if it is possible for the
regulations of magistrates, either by shutting up the sick or removing
them, to stop an infection which spreads itself from man to man even
while they are perfectly well and insensible of its approach, and may
be so for many days.
It may be proper to ask here how long it may be supposed men
might have the seeds of the contagion in them before it discovered
itself in this fatal manner, and how long they might go about
seemingly whole, and yet be contagious to all those that came near
them. I believe the most experienced physicians cannot answer this
question directly any more than I can; and something an ordinary
observer may take notice of, which may pass their observations. The
opinion of physicians abroad seems to be that it may lie dormant in
the spirits or in the blood-vessels a very considerable time. Why else
do they exact a quarantine of those who came into their harbours and
ports from suspected places? Forty days is, one would think, too long
for nature to struggle with such an enemy as this, and not conquer it or
yield to it. But I could not think, by my own observation, that they
can be infected so as to be contagious to others above fifteen or
sixteen days at furthest; and on that score it was, that when a house
was shut up in the city and any one had died of the plague, but nobody
appeared to be ill in the family for sixteen or eighteen days after, they
were not so strict but that they would connive at their going privately
abroad; nor would people be much afraid of them afterward, but
rather think they were fortified the better, having not been vulnerable
when the enemy was in their own house; but we sometimes found it
had lain much longer concealed.
Upon the foot of all these observations I must say that though
Providence seemed to direct my conduct to be otherwise, yet it is my
opinion, and I must leave it as a prescription, viz., that the best physic
against the plague is to run away from it. I know people encourage
themselves by saying God is able to keep us in the midst of danger,
and able to overtake us when we think ourselves out of danger; and
this kept thousands in the town whose carcases went into the great pits
by cartloads, and who, if they had fled from the danger, had, I believe,
been safe from the disaster; at least ’tis probable they had been safe.
And were this very fundamental only duly considered by the people
on any future occasion of this or the like nature, I am persuaded it
would put them upon quite different measures for managing the
people from those that they took in 1665, or than any that have been
taken abroad that I have heard of. In a word, they would consider of
separating the people into smaller bodies, and removing them in time