an be infected, so as to be contagious to others,
above fifteen or sixteen days at farthest; and on that score it was,
that when a house was shut up in the city, and any one had died of the
plague, but nobody appeared to be ill in the family for sixteen or
eighteen days after, they were not so strict but that they[266] would
connive at their going privately abroad; nor would people be much afraid
of them afterwards, but rather think they were fortified the better,
having not been vulnerable when the enemy was in their house: but we
sometimes found it had lain much longer concealed.

Upon the foot of all these observations I must say, that, though
Providence seemed to direct my conduct to be otherwise, it is my
opinion, and I must leave it as a prescription, viz., that the best
physic against the plague is to run away from it. I know people
encourage themselves by saying, "God is able to keep us in the midst of
danger, and able to overtake us when we think ourselves out of danger;"
and this kept thousands in the town whose carcasses went into the great
pits by cartloads, and who, if they had fled from the danger, had, I
believe, been safe from the disaster: at least, 'tis probable they had
been safe.

And were this very fundamental[267] only duly considered by the people
on any future occasion of this or the like nature, I am persuaded it
would put them upon quite different measures for managing the people
from those that they took in 1665, or than any that have been taken
abroad that I have heard of: in a word, they would consider of
separating the people into smaller bodies, and removing them in time
farther from one another, and not let such a contagion as this, which is
indeed chiefly dangerous to collected bodies of people, find a million
of people in a body together, as was very near the case before, and
would certainly be the case if it should ever appear again.

The plague, like a great fire, if a few houses only are contiguous where
it happens, can only[268] burn a few houses; or if it begins in a
single, or, as we call it, a lone house, can only burn that lone house
where it begins; but if it begins in a close-built town or city, and
gets ahead, there its fury increases, it rages over the whole place, and
consumes all it can reach.

I could propose many schemes on the foot of which the government of
this city, if ever they should be under the apprehension of such another
enemy, (God forbid they should!) mig