at large hereafter.
I am supposing now the plague to be begun, as I have said, and that
the magistrates began to take the condition of the people into their
serious consideration. What they did as to the regulation of the
inhabitants and of infected families, I shall speak to by itself; but as to
the affair of health, it is proper to mention it here that, having seen the
foolish humour of the people in running after quacks and
mountebanks, wizards and fortune-tellers, which they did as above,
even to madness, the Lord Mayor, a very sober and religious
gentleman, appointed physicians and surgeons for relief of the poor – I
mean the diseased poor and in particular ordered the College of
Physicians to publish directions for cheap remedies for the poor, in all
the circumstances of the distemper. This, indeed, was one of the most
charitable and judicious things that could be done at that time, for this
drove the people from haunting the doors of every disperser of bills,
and from taking down blindly and without consideration poison for
physic and death instead of life.
This direction of the physicians was done by a consultation of the
whole College; and, as it was particularly calculated for the use of the
poor and for cheap medicines, it was made public, so that everybody
might see it, and copies were given gratis to all that desired it. But as
it is public, and to be seen on all occasions, I need not give the reader
of this the trouble of it.
I shall not be supposed to lessen the authority or capacity of the
physicians when I say that the violence of the distemper, when it came
to its extremity, was like the fire the next year. The fire, which
consumed what the plague could not touch, defied all the application
of remedies; the fire-engines were broken, the buckets thrown away,
and the power of man was baffled and brought to an end. So the
Plague defied all medicines; the very physicians were seized with it,
with their preservatives in their mouths; and men went about
prescribing to others and telling them what to do till the tokens were
upon them, and they dropped down dead, destroyed by that very
enemy they directed others to oppose. This was the case of several
physicians, even some of them the most eminent, and of several of the
most skilful surgeons. Abundance of quacks too died, who had the
folly to trust to their own medicines, which they must needs be
conscious to themselves were good for nothing, and who rather ought,
like other sorts of thieves, to have run away, sensible of their guilt,
from the justice that they could not but expect should punish them as
they knew they had deserved.
Not that it is any derogation from the labour or application of the
physicians to say they fell in the common calamity; nor is it so
intended by me; it rather is to their praise that they ventured their lives
so far as even to lose them in the service of mankind. They
endeavoured to do good, and to save the lives of others. But we were
not to expect that the physicians could stop God’s judgements, or
prevent a distemper eminently armed from heaven from executing the
errand it was sent about.
Doubtless, the physicians assisted many by their skill, and by their
prudence and applications, to the saving of their lives and restoring
their health. But it is not lessening their character or their skill, to say
they could not cure those that had the tokens upon them, or those who
were mortally infected before the physicians were sent for, as was
frequently the case.
It remains to mention now what public measures were taken by the
magistrates for the general safety, and to prevent the spreading of the
distemper, when it first broke out. I shall have frequent occasion to
speak of the prudence of the magistrates, their charity, their vigilance
for the poor, and for preserving good order, furnishing provisions, and
the like, when the plague was increased, as it afterwards was. But I
am now upon the order and regulations they published for the