A Journal of the Plague Year, Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in London

by Daniel Defoe

for all that could conceal their distempers did it, to prevent their neighbours shunning and refusing to converse with them, and also to prevent authority shutting up their houses; which, though it was not yet practised, yet was threatened, and people were extremely terrified at the thoughts of it.

Social distancing and quarantine no more embraced then by the populace than now