History of the Plague in London

by Daniel Defoe

days. These breathed death inevery place, and upon everybody who came near them; nay, their veryclothes retained the infection; their hands would infect the things theytouched, especially if they were warm and sweaty, and they weregenerally apt to sweat, too.

  Now, it was impossible to know these people, nor did they sometimes, asI have said, know themselves, to be infected. These were the people thatso often dropped down and fainted in the streets; for oftentimes theywould go about the streets to the last, till on a sudden they wouldsweat, grow faint, sit down at a door, and die. It is true, findingthemselves thus, they would struggle hard to get home to their owndoors, or at other times would be just able to go into their houses, anddie instantly. Other times they would go about till they had the verytokens come out upon them, and yet not know it, and would die in an houror two after they came home, but be well as long as they were abroad.These were the dangerous people; these were the people of whom the wellpeople ought to have been afraid: but then, on the other side, it wasimpossible to know them.

  And this is the reason why it is impossible in a visitation to preventthe spreading of the plague by the utmost human vigilance; viz., that itis impossible to know the infected people from the sound, or that theinfected people should perfectly know themselves. I knew a man whoconversed freely in London all the season of the plague in 1665, andkept about him an antidote or cordial, on purpose to take when hethought himself in any danger; and he had such a rule to know, or havewarning of the danger by, as indeed I never met with before or since:how far it may be depended on, I know not. He had a wound in his leg;and whenever he came among any people that were not sound, and theinfection began to affect him, he said he could know it by that signal,viz., that the wound in his leg would smart, and look pale and white: soas soon as ever he felt it smart it was time for him to withdraw, or totake care of himself, taking his drink, which he always carried abouthim for that purpose. Now, it seems he found his wound would smart manytimes when he was in company with such who thought themselves to besound, and who appeared so to one another; but he would presently riseup, and say publicly, "Friends, here is somebody in the room that hasthe plague," and so would immediately break up the company. This was,indeed, a faithful monitor to all people, that the plague is not to beavoided by those that converse promiscuously in a town infected, andpeople have it when they know it not, and that they likewise give it toothers when they know not that they have it themselves; and in thiscase, shutting up the well or removing the sick will not do it, unlessthey can go back and shut up all those that the sick had conversed with,even before they knew themselves to be sick; and none knows how far tocarry that back, or where to stop, for none knows when, or where, orhow, they may have received the infection, or from whom.

  This I take to be the reason which makes so many people talk of the airbeing corrupted and infected, and that they need not be cautious of whomthey converse with, for that the contagion was in the air. I have seenthem in strange agitations and surprises on this account. "I have nevercome near any infected body," says the disturbed person; "I haveconversed with none but sound healthy people, and yet I have gotten thedistemper." "I am sure I am struck from Heaven," says another, and hefalls to the serious part.[262] Again the first goes on exclaiming, "Ihave come near no infection, or any infected person; I am sure it is inthe air; we draw in death when we breathe, and therefore it is the handof God: there is no withstanding it." And this at last made many people,being hardened to the danger, grow less concerned at it, and lesscautious towards the latter end of the time, and when it was come to itsheight, than they were at first. Then, with a kind of a Turkishpredestinarianism,[263] they would say, if it pleased God to strikethem, it was all one whether they went abroad, or staid at home: theycould not escape it. And therefore they went boldly about, even intoinfected houses and infected company, visited sick people, and, inshort, lay in the beds with their wives or relations when they wereinfected. And what was the consequence but the same that is theconsequence in Turkey, and in those countries where they do thosethings, namely, that they were infected too, and died by hundreds andthousands?

  I would be far from lessening the awe of the judgments of God, and thereverence to his providence, which ought always to be on our minds onsuch occasions as these. Doubtless the visitation itself is a strokefrom Heaven upon a city, or country, or nation, where it falls; amessenger of his vengeance, and a loud call to that nation, or country,or city, to humiliation and repentance, according to that of the prophetJeremiah (xviii. 7, 8): "At what instant I shall speak concerning anation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and todestroy it; if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn fromtheir evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them."Now, to prompt due impressions of the awe of God on the minds of men onsuch occasions, and not to lessen them, it is that I have left thoseminutes upon record.

  I say, therefore, I reflect upon no man for putting the reason of thosethings upon the immediate hand of God and the appointment and directionof his providence; nay, on the contrary, there were many wonderfuldeliverances of persons from infection, and deliverances of personswhen infected, which intimate singular and remarkable providence in theparticular instances to which they refer; and I esteem my owndeliverance to be one next to miraculous, and do record it withthankfulness.

  But when I am speaking of the plague as a distemper arising from naturalcauses, we must consider it as it was really propagated by naturalmeans. Nor is it at all the less a judgment for its being under theconduct of human causes and effects; for as the Divine Power has formedthe whole scheme of nature, and maintains nature in its course, so thesame Power thinks fit to let his own actings with men, whether of mercyor judgment, to go on in the ordinary course of natural causes, and heis pleased to act by those natural causes as the ordinary means,excepting and reserving to himself, nevertheless, a power to act in asupernatural way when he sees occasion. Now it is evident, that, in thecase of an infection, there is no apparent extraordinary occasion forsupernatural operation; but the ordinary course of things appearssufficiently armed, and made capable of all the effects that Heavenusually directs by a contagion. Among these causes and effects, this ofthe secret conveyance of infection, imperceptible and unavoidable, ismore than sufficient to execute the fierceness of divine vengeance,without putting it upon supernaturals and miracles.

  The acute, penetrating nature of the disease itself was such, and theinfection was received so imperceptibly, that the most exact cautioncould not secure us while in the place; but I must be allowed tobelieve--and I have so many examples fresh in my memory to convince meof it, that I think none can resist their evidence,--I say, I must beallowed to believe that no one in this whole nation ever received thesickness or infection, but who received it in the ordinary way ofinfection from somebody, or the clothes, or touch, or stench ofsomebody, that was infected before.

  The manner of its first coming to London proves this also, viz., bygoods brought over from Holland, and brought thither from the Levant;the first breaking of it out in a house in Longacre where those goodswere carried and first opened; its spreading from that house to otherhouses by the visible unwary conversing with those who were sick, andthe infecting the parish officers who were employed about persons dead;and the like. These are known authorities for this great foundationpoint, that it went on and proceeded from person to person, and fromhouse to house, and no otherwise. In the first house that was infected,there died four persons. A neighbor, hearing the mistress of the firsthouse was sick, went to visit her, and went home and gave the distemperto her family, and died, and all her household. A minister called topray with the first sick person in the second house was said to sickenimmediately, and die, with several more in his house. Then thephysicians began to consider, for they did not at first dream of ageneral contagion; but the physicians being sent to inspect the bodies,they assured the people that it was neither more or less than theplague, with all its terrifying particulars, and that it threat
ened anuniversal infection; so many people having already conversed with thesick or distempered, and having, as might be supposed, receivedinfection from them, that it would be impossible to put a stop to it.

  Here the opinion of the physicians agreed with my observationafterwards, namely, that the danger was spreading insensibly: for thesick could infect none but those that came within reach of the sickperson; but that one man, who may have really received the infection,and knows it not, but goes abroad and about as a sound person, may givethe plague to a thousand people, and they to greater numbers inproportion, and neither the person giving the infection, nor the personsreceiving it, know anything of it, and perhaps not feel the effects ofit for several days after. For example:--

  Many persons, in the time of this visitation, never perceived that theywere infected till they found, to their unspeakable surprise, the tokenscome out upon them, after