A Journal of the Plague Year

by Daniel Defoe

It is true, we could not pretend to forbid their People coming to London, because it was impossible to know them assunder, so after many Consultations, the Lord Mayor, and Court of Aldermen were oblig’d to drop it: All they cou’d do, was to warn and caution the People, not to entertain in their Houses, or converse with any People who they knew came from such infected Places.

But they might as well have talk’d to the Air, for the People of London thought themselves so Plague-free now, that they were past all Admonitions; they seem’d to depend upon it, that the Air was restor’d, and that the Air was like a Man ...

this reviv’d that Notion, that the Infection was all in the Air, that there was no such thing as Contagion from the sick People to the Sound; and so strongly did this Whimsy prevail among People, that they run all together promiscuously, sick and well, not the Mahometans, who, prepossess’d with the Principle of Predestination value nothing of ...

Some indeed paid for their audacious Boldness with the Price of their Lives; an infinite Number fell sick, and the Physicians had more Work than ever, only with this Difference, that more of their Patients recovered;

they sang his Praise, but they soon forgot his Works.