had the distemper, he thought he had it given him by a poor workman
whom he employed, and whom he went to his house to see, or went
for some work that he wanted to have finished; and he had some
apprehensions even while he was at the poor workman’s door, but did
not discover it fully; but the next day it discovered itself, and he was
taken very in, upon which he immediately caused himself to be
carried into an outbuilding which he had in his yard, and where there
was a chamber over a workhouse (the man being a brazier). Here he
lay, and here he died, and would be tended by none of his neighbours,
but by a nurse from abroad; and would not suffer his wife, nor
children, nor servants to come up into the room, lest they should be
infected – but sent them his blessing and prayers for them by the
nurse, who spoke it to them at a distance, and all this for fear of giving
them the distemper; and without which he knew, as they were kept up,
they could not have it.
And here I must observe also that the plague, as I suppose all
distempers do, operated in a different manner on differing
constitutions; some were immediately overwhelmed with it, and it
came to violent fevers, vomitings, insufferable headaches, pains in the
back, and so up to ravings and ragings with those pains; others with
swellings and tumours in the neck or groin, or armpits, which till they
could be broke put them into insufferable agonies and torment; while
others, as I have observed, were silently infected, the fever preying
upon their spirits insensibly, and they seeing little of it till they fell
into swooning, and faintings, and death without pain.
I am not physician enough to enter into the particular reasons and
manner of these differing effects of one and the same distemper, and
of its differing operation in several bodies; nor is it my business here
to record the observations which I really made, because the doctors
themselves have done that part much more effectually than I can do,
and because my opinion may in some things differ from theirs. I am
only relating what I know, or have heard, or believe of the particular
cases, and what fell within the compass of my view, and the different
nature of the infection as it appeared in the particular cases which I
have related; but this may be added too: that though the former sort of
those cases, namely, those openly visited, were the worst for
themselves as to pain – I mean those that had such fevers, vomitings,
headaches, pains, and swellings, because they died in such a dreadful
manner – yet the latter had the worst state of the disease; for in the
former they frequently recovered, especially if the swellings broke;
but the latter was inevitable death; no cure, no hell), could be
possible, nothing could follow but death. And it was worse also to
others, because, as above, it secretly and unperceived by others or by
themselves, communicated death to those they conversed with, the
penetrating poison insinuating itself into their blood in a manner
which it is impossible to describe, or indeed conceive.
This infecting and being infected without so much as its being
known to either person is evident from two sorts of cases which
frequently happened at that time; and there is hardly anybody living
who was in London during the infection but must have known several
of the cases of both sorts.
(1) Fathers and mothers have gone about as if they had been well,
and have believed themselves to be so, till they have insensibly
infected and been the destruction of their whole families, which they
would have been far from doing if they had the least apprehensions of
their being unsound and dangerous themselves. A family, whose story
I have heard, was thus infected by the father; and the distemper began
to appear upon some of them even before he found it upon himself.
But searching more narrowly, it appeared he had been affected some
time; and as soon as he found that his family had been poisoned by