certain – many of them came within the reach of my own knowledge –
but that all of them were swept off I much question. I believe rather
they fled into the country and tried their practices upon the people
there, who were in apprehension of the infection before it came
among them.
This, however, is certain, not a man of them appeared for a great
while in or about London. There were, indeed, several doctors who
published bills recommending their several physical preparations for
cleansing the body, as they call it, after the plague, and needful, as
they said, for such people to take who had been visited and had been
cured; whereas I must own I believe that it was the opinion of the
most eminent physicians at that time that the plague was itself a
sufficient purge, and that those who escaped the infection needed no
physic to cleanse their bodies of any other things; the running sores,
the tumours, &c., which were broke and kept open by the directions of
the physicians, having sufficiently cleansed them; and that all other
distempers, and causes of distempers, were effectually carried off that
way; and as the physicians gave this as their opinions wherever they
came, the quacks got little business.
There were, indeed, several little hurries which happened after the
decrease of the plague, and which, whether they were contrived to
fright and disorder the people, as some imagined, I cannot say, but
sometimes we were told the plague would return by such a time; and
the famous Solomon Eagle, the naked Quaker I have mentioned,
prophesied evil tidings every day; and several others telling us that
London had not been sufficiently scourged, and that sorer and severer
strokes were yet behind. Had they stopped there, or had they
descended to particulars, and told us that the city should the next year
be destroyed by fire, then, indeed, when we had seen it come to pass,
we should not have been to blame to have paid more than a common
respect to their prophetic spirits; at least we should have wondered at
them, and have been more serious in our inquiries after the meaning
of it, and whence they had the foreknowledge. But as they generally
told us of a relapse into the plague, we have had no concern since that
about them; yet by those frequent clamours, we were all kept with
some kind of apprehensions constantly upon us; and if any died
suddenly, or if the spotted fevers at any time increased, we were
presently alarmed; much more if the number of the plague increased,
for to the end of the year there were always between 200 and 300 of
the plague. On any of these occasions, I say, we were alarmed anew.
Those who remember the city of London before the fire must
remember that there was then no such place as we now call Newgate
Market, but that in the middle of the street which is now called Blow-
bladder Street, and which had its name from the butchers, who used to
kill and dress their sheep there (and who, it seems, had a custom to
blow up their meat with pipes to make it look thicker and fatter than it
was, and were punished there for it by the Lord Mayor); I say, from
the end of the street towards Newgate there stood two long rows of
shambles for the selling meat.
It was in those shambles that two persons falling down dead, as they
were buying meat, gave rise to a rumour that the meat was all
infected; which, though it might affright the people, and spoiled the
market for two or three days, yet it appeared plainly afterwards that
there was nothing of truth in the suggestion. But nobody can account
for the possession of fear when it takes hold of the mind.
However, it Pleased God, by the continuing of the winter weather,
so to restore the health of the city that by February following we
reckoned the distemper quite ceased, and then we were not so easily
frighted again.
There was still a question among the learned, and at first perplexed