emember, to make the
experiment with.[273]

It was the opinion, also, of another learned man that the breath of such
a person would poison and instantly kill a bird, not only a small bird,
but even a cock or hen; and that, if it did not immediately kill the
latter, it would cause them to be roupy,[274] as they call it;
particularly that, if they had laid any eggs at that time, they would be
all rotten. But those are opinions which I never found supported by any
experiments, or heard of others that had seen it,[275] so I leave them
as I find them, only with this remark, namely, that I think the
probabilities are very strong for them.

Some have proposed that such persons should breathe hard upon warm
water, and that they would leave an unusual scum upon it, or upon
several other things, especially such as are of a glutinous substance,
and are apt to receive a scum, and support it.

But, from the whole, I found that the nature of this contagion was such
that it was impossible to discover it at all, or to prevent it spreading
from one to another by any human skill.

Here was indeed one difficulty, which I could never thoroughly get over
to this time, and which there is but one way of answering that I know
of, and it is this; viz., the first person that died of the plague was
on December 20th, or thereabouts, 1664, and in or about Longacre: whence
the first person had the infection was generally said to be from a
parcel of silks imported from Holland, and first opened in that house.

But after this we heard no more of any person dying of the plague, or of
the distemper being in that place, till the 9th of February, which was
about seven weeks after, and then one more was buried out of the same
house. Then it was hushed, and we were perfectly easy as to the public
for a great while; for there were no more entered in the weekly bill to
be dead of the plague till the 22d of April, when there were two more
buried, not out of the same house, but out of the same street; and, as
near as I can remember, it was out of the next house to the first. This
was nine weeks asunder; and after this we had no more till a fortnight,
and then it broke out in several streets, and spread every way. Now, the
question seems to lie thus: Where lay the seeds of the infection all
this while? how came it to stop so long, and not stop any longer? Either
the distemper did not come immediately by contagion from body to body,
or, if it did, then a bod