help of others to bring him back, but all in vain, nobody daring to lay
a hand upon him or to come near him?
This was a most grievous and afflicting thing to me, who saw it all
from my own windows; for all this while the poor afflicted man was,
as I observed it, even then in the utmost agony of pain, having (as they
said) two swellings upon him which could not be brought to break or
to suppurate; but, by laying strong caustics on them, the surgeons had,
it seems, hopes to break them – which caustics were then upon him,
burning his flesh as with a hot iron. I cannot say what became of this
poor man, but I think he continued roving about in that manner till he
fell down and died.
No wonder the aspect of the city itself was frightful. The usual
concourse of people in the streets, and which used to be supplied from
our end of the town, was abated. The Exchange was not kept shut,
indeed, but it was no more frequented. The fires were lost; they had
been almost extinguished for some days by a very smart and hasty
rain. But that was not all; some of the physicians insisted that they
were not only no benefit, but injurious to the health of people. This
they made a loud clamour about, and complained to the Lord Mayor
about it. On the other hand, others of the same faculty, and eminent
too, opposed them, and gave their reasons why the fires were, and
must be, useful to assuage the violence of the distemper. I cannot
give a full account of their arguments on both sides; only this I
remember, that they cavilled very much with one another. Some were
for fires, but that they must be made of wood and not coal, and of
particular sorts of wood too, such as fir in particular, or cedar, because
of the strong effluvia of turpentine; others were for coal and not wood,
because of the sulphur and bitumen; and others were for neither one
or other. Upon the whole, the Lord Mayor ordered no more fires, and
especially on this account, namely, that the plague was so fierce that
they saw evidently it defied all means, and rather seemed to increase
than decrease upon any application to check and abate it; and yet this
amazement of the magistrates proceeded rather from want of being
able to apply any means successfully than from any unwillingness
either to expose themselves or undertake the care and weight of
business; for, to do them justice, they neither spared their pains nor
their persons. But nothing answered; the infection raged, and the
people were now frighted and terrified to the last degree: so that, as I
may say, they gave themselves up, and, as I mentioned above,
abandoned themselves to their despair.
But let me observe here that, when I say the people abandoned
themselves to despair, I do not mean to what men call a religious
despair, or a despair of their eternal state, but I mean a despair of their
being able to escape the infection or to outlive the plague. which they
saw was so raging and so irresistible in its force that indeed few
people that were touched with it in its height, about August and
September, escaped; and, which is very particular, contrary to its
ordinary operation in June and July, and the beginning of August,
when, as I have observed, many were infected, and continued so many
days, and then went off after having had the poison in their blood a
long time; but now, on the contrary, most of the people who were
taken during the two last weeks in August and in the three first weeks
in September, generally died in two or three days at furthest, and
many the very same day they were taken; whether the dog-days, or, as
our astrologers pretended to express themselves, the influence of the
dog-star, had that malignant effect, or all those who had the seeds of
infection before in them brought it up to a maturity at that time
altogether, I know not; but this was the time when it was reported that