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

by Daniel Defoe

Indeed nothing was more strange than to see with what courage the people went to the public service of God, even at that time when they were afraid to stir out of their own houses

Our merchants were accordingly at a full stop;

our woollen manufactures are as retentive of infection as human bodies, and if packed up by persons infected,

they always caused the bales to be opened and aired in places appointed for that purpose.

corn-trade

the third branch was from the river Medway, and from Milton, Feversham, Margate, and Sandwich, and all the other little places and ports round the coast of Kent and Essex.

Others said they granted that heat in the climate might propagate infection—as

also that heat in the air, or heat of weather, as we ordinarily call it, makes bodies relax and faint, exhausts the spirits, opens the pores, and makes us more apt to receive infection, or any evil influence,

the heat being not of the same kind, but quick and fierce, tending not to nourish but to consume and dissipate all those noxious fumes which the other kind of heat rather exhaled and stagnated than separated and burnt up. Besides, it was alleged that the sulphurous and nitrous particles that are often found to be in the coal, with that bituminous substance which burns, are all assisting to clear and purge the air, and render it wholesome and safe to breathe

There was a most excessive plenty of all sorts of fruit, such as apples, pears, plums, cherries, grapes, and they were the cheaper because of the want of people; but this made the poor eat them to excess, and this brought them into fluxes, griping of the guts, surfeits, and the like, which often precipitated them into the plague.

that the distemper was not so catching as formerly, and that if it was catched it was not so mortal, and seeing abundance of people who really fell sick recover again daily, they took to such a precipitant courage, and grew so entirely regardless of themselves and of the infection, that they made no more of the plague than of an ordinary fever,

terrible burning of the caustics which the surgeons laid on the swellings to bring them to break and to run, without which the danger of death was very great,

It was indeed surprising to see it, for though there died still from 1000 to 1800 a week, yet the people flocked to town as if all had been well. The consequence of this was, that the bills increased again 400

all the prescriptions of all the physicians in London be examined, and it will be found that they are all compounded of the same things, with such variations only as the particular fancy of the doctor leads him to; so that', says he, 'every man, judging a little of his own constitution and manner of his living, and circumstances of his being infected, may direct his own medicines out of the ordinary drugs and preparations.

several times took Venice treacle,

that they sang His praise, but they soon forgot His works.

A dreadful plague in London was In the year sixty-five, Which swept an hundred thousand souls Away; yet I alive!