f distressed mothers, raving and distracted, killing
their own children; one whereof was not far off from where I dwelt, the
poor lunatic creature not living herself long enough to be sensible of
the sin of what she had done, much less to be punished for it.

It is not, indeed, to be wondered at; for the danger of immediate death
to ourselves took away all bowels of love, all concern for one another.
I speak in general: for there were many instances of immovable
affection, pity, and duty in many, and some that came to my knowledge,
that is to say, by hearsay; for I shall not take upon me to vouch the
truth of the particulars.

I could tell here dismal stories of living infants being found sucking
the breasts of their mothers or nurses after they have been dead of the
plague; of a mother in the parish where I lived, who, having a child
that was not well, sent for an apothecary to view the child, and when he
came, as the relation goes, was giving the child suck at her breast, and
to all appearance was herself very well; but, when the apothecary came
close to her, he saw the tokens upon that breast with which she was
suckling the child. He was surprised enough, to be sure; but, not
willing to fright the poor woman too much, he desired she would give the
child into his hand: so he takes the child, and, going to a cradle in
the room, lays it in, and, opening its clothes, found the tokens upon
the child too; and both died before he could get home to send a
preventive medicine to the father of the child, to whom he had told
their condition. Whether the child infected the nurse mother, or the
mother the child, was not certain, but the last most likely.

Likewise of a child brought home to the parents from a nurse that had
died of the plague; yet the tender mother would not refuse to take in
her child, and laid it in her bosom, by which she was infected and died,
with the child in her arms dead also.

It would make the hardest heart move at the instances that were
frequently found of tender mothers tending and watching with their dear
children, and even dying before them, and sometimes taking the distemper
from them, and dying, when the child for whom the affectionate heart
had been sacrificed has got over it and escaped.

I have heard also of some who, on the death of their relations, have
grown stupid with the insupportable sorrow; and of one in particular,
who was so absolutely overcome with the pressure upon his spirits,