Status Updates From Diario del año de la peste

igual muero antes de terminar este libro

socorro:)

sad.

“Cant you read something happy for once” -my mom

Not going to lie: I’m struggling a bit with this book. It’s a bit repetitive for me, but, now having lived through a plague, I’m finding a lot of similarities with human behavior.

So much to annotate ❤️

Probably about 100,000 dead (25% of city). Difficult to get accurate numbers because those in charge of keeping track had a 25% chance of getting sick and dying, though deaths were concentrated more highly among the poor.

London the center of the plague. Nearby villages have hands-off approach, suspicious of those fleeing London, fearful of getting the plague. Those fleeing are likewise fearful of villagers.

Defoe has generally high praise for governance of London (Lord Mayor and other govt officials) for keeping good order and making sure the poor have food, at least.

Locking up houses of infected, Defoe insists, is pointless, even counterproductive. People find a way to get out if they are determined. Keeping the healthy in a household with the sick makes no sense. People who are infected sometimes show no signs of their infection and so walk about freely . . . until they suddenly grow ill in hours.

Horrifying stories of the perils of pregnancy during the plague. 1) Difficult to impossible to get a midwife 2) Pregnant women giving birth while infected . . . and infecting their babies.
Staggeringly high percentage of mothers and babies die in all areas.

Perfect reading for when you have covid lol

Style is modern, straight-forward prose. Defoe's depiction of life under a pandemic is familiar. In the absence of any cure, quacks and cheats abound, both religious and "medical." Victims are made to quarantine alone with their entire family/servants. Guard put outside door. D. thinks this counterproductive as people, desperate, find ways out of their homes and then leave the area, spreading disease.

i never thought a book aboyt the plauge would be more interesting than dracula

Czytając relację Defoe o zarazie, mam wrażenie, że czytam o pandemii z XXI wieku. To dla mnie niewiarygodne, że opisy (np. zachowań ludzi lub postępu zarażeń) są tak aktualne.

Honestly kind of boring… This is definitely a hard read

As I read this before going to sleep, last night it delivered some nasty nightmares

This is one dreadful dreadful text

I probably wouldn't have started this, and definitely wouldn't have finished it, before 2020. It's rambling and tedious, full of repetition and devoid of organization. But it's also really fascinating, having lived through similar times. It's been over 350 years since the events told here and people really haven't changed.

‘I have heard it was the opinion of others that it might be distinguished by the party’s breathing upon a piece of glass, where, the breath condensing, there might living creatures be seen by a microscope, of strange, monstrous, and frightful shapes, such as dragons, snakes, serpents, and devils, horrible to behold.’

‘Passing through Tokenhouse Yard, in Lothbury, of a sudden a casement violently opened just over my head, and a woman gave three frightful screeches, and then cried, ‘Oh! death, death, death!’ in a most inimitable tone, and which struck me with horror and a chillness in my very blood. There was nobody to be seen in the whole street, neither did any other window open for people had no curiosity now…’

Another ran about naked, except a pair of drawers about his waist, crying day and night, like a man that Josephus mentions, who cried, ‘Woe to Jerusalem!’ a little before the destruction of that city. So this poor naked creature cried, ‘Oh, the great and the dreadful God!’ and said no more, but repeated those words continually, with a voice and countenance full of horror, a swift pace…

“A dreadful plague in London was, in the year 65, Which swept an Hundred Thousand Souls Away, yet I alive!”

“I must own that for the generality of the people it might be too justly said of them, as was said of the children of Israel? After their being delivered from the host of Israel….Tbay they sang his praise, but they soon forgot his works.”

“Let the philosophers search for reasons in nature to account for it by, and labor as much as they will to lessen the debt they owe to their maker; those physicians, who had the least share of religion in them were obliged to acknowledge that it was all supernatural, that it was extraordinary, and that no account could be given of it.”

“In the middle of their distress, when the condition of the city of London was so truly calamitous, just then it pleased God, as it were, by his immediate hand to disarm this enemy. The poison was taken out of the sting, it was wonderful, even the physicians themselves were surprised by it”

“I must confess myself to have been very much dejected just before this happened, for the prodigious number that were taken suck the week or two before, besides those that died, was such and the lamentations were so great everywhere, that man must have seemed to have acted even against his reason if he had so much as expected to escape”

Nothing but the immediate finger of God, nothing but omnipotent power could’ve done it; the contagion despised all medicine, death raged in every corner & had it gone on as it did, a few weeks would have cleared the town of all…men everywhere began to despair, every heart failed them for fear, people were made desperate through the anguish of their souls &the terrors of death sat in the very faces & countenances

“Some fancies they (quacks and fake doctors) we’re all swept away in the infection to a man, and we’re for calling it a particular mark of God’s vengeance upon them for leading the poor people into the pit of destruction, merely for the lucre of a little money they got by them; but I cannot go that length neither”

“Upon all these accounts I say I could wish, when we were recovered, our conduct had been more distinguished for charity and kindness in thr remembersnce of the past calamity, and not so much a valuing our selves upon our boldness in staying, as if all men were cowards they fly from the hand of God…”

“I think it ought to be recorded to the honor of such men, as well clergy as physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, magistrates, and officers of every kind, as also all useful people, who ventured their lives in discharge of their duty, as most certainly all such as stayed did to the last degree, and several of these kinds did not only venture but lose their lives on that sad occasion”