had burned a great variety of fumes and perfumes in all the rooms,
and made a great many smokes of pitch, of gunpowder, and of sulphur. All
separately shifted,[241] and washed their clothes, and the like. As to
the poor man, whether he lived or died, I do not remember.

It is most certain, that if, by the shutting up of houses, the sick had
not been confined, multitudes, who in the height of their fever were
delirious and distracted, would have been continually running up and
down the streets; and even as it was, a very great number did so, and
offered all sorts of violence to those they met, even just as a mad dog
runs on and bites at every one he meets. Nor can I doubt but that,
should one of those infected diseased creatures have bitten any man or
woman while the frenzy of the distemper was upon them, they (I mean the
person so wounded) would as certainly have been incurably infected as
one that was sick before and had the tokens upon him.

I heard of one infected creature, who, running out of his bed in his
shirt, in the anguish and agony of his swellings (of which he had three
upon him), got his shoes on, and went to put on his coat; but the nurse
resisting, and snatching the coat from him, he threw her down, run over
her, ran downstairs and into the street directly to the Thames, in his
shirt, the nurse running after him, and calling to the watch to stop
him. But the watchman, frightened at the man, and afraid to touch him,
let him go on; upon which he ran down to the Still-Yard Stairs, threw
away his shirt, and plunged into the Thames, and, being a good swimmer,
swam quite over the river; and the tide being "coming in," as they call
it (that is, running westward), he reached the land not till he came
about the Falcon Stairs, where, landing and finding no people there, it
being in the night, he ran about the streets there, naked as he was, for
a good while, when, it being by that time high water, he takes the
river again, and swam back to the Still Yard, landed, ran up the streets
to his own house, knocking at the door, went up the stairs, and into his
bed again; and[242] that this terrible experiment cured him of the
plague, that is to say, that the violent motion of his arms and legs
stretched the parts where the swellings he had upon him were (that is to
say, under his arms and in his groin), and caused them to ripen and
break; and that the cold of the water abated the fever in his blood.

I have only to add,