by Daniel Defoe
abundance perished,and particularly those whom these false prophets flattered with hopesthat they should be kept in their services, and carried with theirmasters and mistresses into the country; and had not public charityprovided for these poor creatures, whose number was exceeding great (andin all cases of this nature must be so), they would have been in theworst condition of any people in the city.
These things agitated the minds of the common people for many monthswhile the first apprehensions were upon them, and while the plague wasnot, as I may say, yet broken out. But I must also not forget that themore serious part of the inhabitants behaved after another manner. Thegovernment encouraged their devotion, and appointed public prayers, anddays of fasting and humiliation, to make public confession of sin, andimplore the mercy of God to avert the dreadful judgment which hangs overtheir heads; and it is not to be expressed with what alacrity the peopleof all persuasions embraced the occasion, how they flocked to thechurches and meetings, and they were all so thronged that there wasoften no coming near, even to the very doors of the largest churches.Also there were daily prayers appointed morning and evening at severalchurches, and days of private praying at other places, at all which thepeople attended, I say, with an uncommon devotion. Several privatefamilies, also, as well of one opinion as another, kept family fasts, towhich they admitted their near relations only; so that, in a word, thosepeople who were really serious and religious applied themselves in atruly Christian manner to the proper work of repentance and humiliation,as a Christian people ought to do.
Again, the public showed that they would bear their share in thesethings. The very court, which was then gay and luxurious, put on a faceof just concern for the public danger. All the plays and interludes[61]which, after the manner of the French court,[62] had been set up andbegan to increase among us, were forbid to act;[63] the gaming tables,public dancing rooms, and music houses, which multiplied and began todebauch the manners of the people, were shut up and suppressed; and thejack puddings,[64] merry-andrews,[64] puppet shows, ropedancers, andsuch like doings, which had bewitched the common people, shut theirshops, finding indeed no trade, for the minds of the people wereagitated with other things, and a kind of sadness and horror at thesethings sat upon the countenances even of the common people. Death wasbefore their eyes, and everybody began to think of their graves, not ofmirth and diversions.
But even these wholesome reflections, which, rightly managed, would havemost happily led the people to fall upon their knees, make confession oftheir sins, and look up to their merciful Savior for pardon, imploringhis compassion on them in such a time of their distress, by which wemight have been as a second Nineveh, had a quite contrary extreme in thecommon people, who, ignorant and stupid in their reflections as theywere brutishly wicked and thoughtless before, were now led by theirfright to extremes of folly, and, as I said before, that they ran toconjurers and witches and all sorts of deceivers, to know what shouldbecome of them, who fed their fears and kept them always alarmed andawake, on purpose to delude them and pick their pockets: so they were asmad upon their running after quacks and mountebanks, and everypracticing old woman for medicines and remedies, storing themselves withsuch multitudes of pills, potions, and preservatives, as they werecalled, that they not only spent their money, but poisoned themselvesbeforehand, for fear of the poison of the infection, and prepared theirbodies for the plague, instead of preserving them against it. On theother hand, it was incredible, and scarce to be imagined, how the postsof houses and corners of streets were plastered over with doctors'bills, and papers of ignorant fellows quacking and tampering in physic,and inviting people to come to them for remedies, which was generallyset off with such flourishes as these; viz., "INFALLIBLE preventitivepills against the plague;" "NEVER-FAILING preservatives against theinfection;" "SOVEREIGN cordials against the corruption of air;" "EXACTregulations for the conduct of the body in case of infection;""Antipestilential pills;" "INCOMPARABLE drink against the plague, neverfound out before;" "An UNIVERSAL remedy for the plague;" "The ONLY TRUEplague water;" "The ROYAL ANTIDOTE against all kinds of infection;" andsuch a number more that I cannot reckon up, and, if I could, would filla book of themselves to set them down.
Others set up bills to summon people to their lodgings for direction andadvice in the case of infection. These had specious titles also, such asthese:--
An eminent High-Dutch physician, newly come over from Holland, where he resided during all the time of the great plague, last year, in Amsterdam, and cured multitudes of people that actually had the plague upon them.
An Italian gentlewoman just arrived from Naples, having a choice secret to prevent infection, which she found out by her great experience, and did wonderful cures with it in the late plague there, wherein there died 20,000 in one day.
An ancient gentlewoman having practiced with great success in the late plague in this city, anno 1636, gives her advice only to the female sex. To be spoken with, etc.
An experienced physician, who has long studied the doctrine of antidotes against all sorts of poison and infection, has, after forty years' practice, arrived at such skill as may, with God's blessing, direct persons how to prevent being touched by any contagious distemper whatsoever. He directs the poor gratis.
I take notice of these by way of specimen. I could give you two or threedozen of the like, and yet have abundance left behind. It is sufficientfrom these to apprise any one of the humor of those times, and how a setof thieves and pickpockets not only robbed and cheated the poor peopleof their money, but poisoned their bodies with odious and fatalpreparations; some with mercury, and some with other things as bad,perfectly remote from the thing pretended to, and rather hurtful thanserviceable to the body in case an infection followed.
I cannot omit a subtlety of one of those quack operators with which hegulled the poor people to crowd about him, but did nothing for themwithout money. He had, it seems, added to his bills, which he gave outin the streets, this advertisement in capital letters; viz., "He givesadvice to the poor for nothing."
Abundance of people came to him accordingly, to whom he made a greatmany fine speeches, examined them of the state of their health and ofthe constitution of their bodies, and told them many good things to do,which were of no great moment. But the issue and conclusion of all was,that he had a preparation which, if they took such a quantity of everymorning, he would pawn his life that they should never have the plague,no, though they lived in the house with people that were infected. Thismade the people all resolve to have it, but then the price of that wasso much (I think it was half a crown[65]). "But, sir," says one poorwoman, "I am a poor almswoman, and am kept by the parish; and your billssay you give the poor your help for nothing."--"Ay, good woman," saysthe doctor, "so I do, as I published there. I give my advice, but not myphysic!"--"Alas, sir," says she, "that is a snare laid for the poorthen, for you give them your advice for nothing; that is to say, youadvise them gratis to buy your physic for their money: so does everyshopkeeper with his wares." Here the woman began to give him ill words,and stood at his door all that day, telling her tale to all the peoplethat came, till the doctor, finding she turned away his customers, wasobliged to call her upstairs again and give her his box of physic fornothing, which perhaps, too, was good for nothing when she had it.
But to return to the people, whose confusions fitted them to be imposedupon by all sorts of pretenders and by every mountebank. There is nodoubt but these quacking sort of fellows raised great gains out of themiserable people; for we daily found the crowds that ran after them wereinfinitely greater, and their doors were more thronged, than those ofDr. Brooks, Dr. Upton, Dr. Hodges, Dr. Berwick, or any, though the mostfamous men of the time; and I was told that some of them got fivepounds[66] a day by their physic.
But there was still another madness beyond all this, which may serve togive an idea of the distracted humor of the poor people at that time,and this was their following a wo
rse sort of deceivers than any ofthese; for these petty thieves only deluded them to pick their pocketsand get their money (in which their wickedness, whatever it was, laychiefly on the side of the deceiver's deceiving, not upon the deceived);but, in this part I am going to mention, it lay chiefly in the peopledeceived, or equally in both. And this was in wearing charms,philters,[67] exorcisms,[68] amulets,[69] and I know not whatpreparations to fortify the body against the plague, as if the plaguewas not the hand of God, but a kind of a possession of an evil spirit,and it was to be kept off with crossings,[70] signs of the zodiac,[71]papers tied up with so many knots, and certain words or figures writtenon them, as particularly the word "Abracadabra,"[72] formed in triangleor pyramid; thus,--
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