use the doctors
themselves have done that part much more effectually than I can do, and
because my opinion may in some things differ from theirs. I am only
relating what I know, or have heard, or believe, of the particular
cases, and what fell within the compass of my view, and the different
nature of the infection as it appeared in the particular cases which I
have related; but this may be added too, that though the former sort of
those cases, namely, those openly visited, were the worst for themselves
as to pain (I mean those that had such fevers, vomitings, headaches,
pains, and swellings), because they died in such a dreadful manner, yet
the latter had the worst state of the disease; for in the former they
frequently recovered, especially if the swellings broke; but the latter
was inevitable death. No cure, no help, could be possible; nothing could
follow but death. And it was worse, also, to others; because, as above,
it secretly and unperceived by others or by themselves, communicated
death to those they conversed with, the penetrating poison insinuating
itself into their blood in a manner which it was impossible to describe,
or indeed conceive.

This infecting and being infected without so much as its being known to
either person is evident from two sorts of cases which frequently
happened at that time; and there is hardly anybody living, who was in
London during the infection, but must have known several of the cases of
both sorts.

1. Fathers and mothers have gone about as if they had been well, and
have believed themselves to be so, till they have insensibly infected
and been the destruction of their whole families; which they would have
been far from doing if they had had the least apprehensions of their
being unsound and dangerous themselves. A family, whose story I have
heard, was thus infected by the father, and the distemper began to
appear upon some of them even before he found it upon himself; but,
searching more narrowly, it appeared he had been infected some time,
and, as soon as he found that his family had been poisoned by himself,
he went distracted, and would have laid violent hands upon himself, but
was kept from that by those who looked to him; and in a few days he
died.

2. The other particular is, that many people, having been well to the
best of their own judgment, or by the best observation which they could
make of themselves for several days, and only finding a decay of
appetite, or a l