goes immediately downstairs. The servant that had let him in goes
down after him with a candle, but was afraid to go past him and open
the door, so he stood on the stairs to see what he would do. The man
went and opened the door, and went out and flung the door after him.
It was some while before the family recovered the fright, but as no ill
consequence attended, they have had occasion since to speak of it
(You may be sure) with great satisfaction. Though the man was gone,
it was some time – nay, as I heard, some days before they recovered
themselves of the hurry they were in; nor did they go up and down the
house with any assurance till they had burnt a great variety of fumes
and perfumes in all the rooms, and made a great many smokes of
pitch, of gunpowder, and of sulphur, all separately shifted, and
washed their clothes, and the like. As to the poor man, whether he
lived or died I don’t remember.
It is most certain that, if by the shutting up of houses the sick bad
not been confined, multitudes who in the height of their fever were
delirious and distracted would have been continually running up and
down the streets; and even as it was a very great number did so, and
offered all sorts of violence to those they met,. even just as a mad dog
runs on and bites at every one he meets; nor can I doubt but that,
should one of those infected, diseased creatures have bitten any man
or woman while the frenzy of the distemper was upon them, they, I
mean the person so wounded, would as certainly have been incurably
infected as one that was sick before, and had the tokens upon him.
I heard of one infected creature who, running out of his bed in his
shirt in the anguish and agony of his swellings, of which he had three
upon him, got his shoes on and went to put on his coat; but the nurse
resisting, and snatching the coat from him, he threw her down, ran
over her, ran downstairs and into the street, directly to the Thames in
his shirt; the nurse running after him, and calling to the watch to stop
him; but the watchman, ftighted at the man, and afraid to touch him,
let him go on; upon which he ran down to the Stillyard stairs, threw
away his shirt, and plunged into the Thames, and, being a good
swimmer, swam quite over the river; and the tide being coming in, as
they call it (that is, running westward) he reached the land not till he
came about the Falcon stairs, where landing, and finding no people
there, it being in the night, he ran about the streets there, naked as he
was, for a good while, when, it being by that time high water, he takes
the river again, and swam back to the Stillyard, landed, ran up the
streets again to his own house, knocking at the door, went up the stairs
and into his bed again; and that this terrible experiment cured him of
the plague, that is to say, that the violent motion of his arms and legs
stretched the parts where the swellings he had upon him were, that is
to say, under his arms and his groin, and caused them to ripen and
break; and that the cold of the water abated the fever in his blood.
I have only to add that I do not relate this any more than some of the
other, as a fact within my own knowledge, so as that I can vouch the
truth of them, and especially that of the man being cured by the
extravagant adventure, which I confess I do not think very possible;
but it may serve to confirm the many desperate things which the
distressed people falling into deliriums, and what we call light-
headedness, were frequently run upon at that time, and how infinitely
more such there would have been if such people had not been
confined by the shutting up of houses; and this I take to be the best, if