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fection did when it was in its chief violence, though the houses infected were shut up as exactly and effectually as it was possible. Certain it is, that, if all the infected persons were effectually shut in, no sound person could have been infected by them, because they could not have come near them.[237] But the case was this (and I shall only touch it here); namely, that the infection was propagated insensibly, and by such persons as were not visibly infected, who neither knew whom they infected, nor whom they were infected by. A house in Whitechapel was shut up for the sake of one infected maid, who had only spots, not the tokens, come out upon her, and recovered; yet these people obtained no liberty to stir, neither for air or exercise, forty days. Want of breath, fear, anger, vexation, and all the other griefs attending such an injurious treatment, cast the mistress of the family into a fever; and visitors came into the house and said it was the plague, though the physicians declared it was not. However, the family were obliged to begin their quarantine anew, on the report of the visitor or examiner, though their former quarantine wanted but a few days of being finished. This oppressed them so with anger and grief, and, as before, straitened them also so much as to room, and for want of breathing and free air, that most of the family fell sick, one of one distemper, one of another, chiefly scorbutic[238] ailments, only one a violent cholic; until, after several prolongings of their confinement, some or other of those that came in with the visitors to inspect the persons that were ill, in hopes of releasing them, brought the distemper with them, and infected the whole house; and all or most of them died, not of the plague as really upon them before, but of the plague that those people brought them, who should have been careful to have protected them from it. And this was a thing which frequently happened, and was indeed one of the worst consequences of shutting houses up. I had about this time a little hardship put upon me, which I was at first greatly afflicted at, and very much disturbed about, though, as it proved, it did not expose me to any disaster; and this was, being appointed, by the alderman of Portsoken Ward, one of the examiners of the houses in the precinct where I lived. We had a large parish, and had no less than eighteen examiners, as the order called us: the people called us visitors. I endeavor
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