eady in case I met with anything of offensive
smells, or went too near any burying place or dead body.

Neither did I do, what I know some did, keep the spirits high and hot
with cordials and wine, and such things, and which, as I observed, one
learned physician used himself so much to, as that he could not leave
them off when the infection was quite gone, and so became a sot for all
his life after.

I remember my friend the doctor used to say that there was a certain set
of drugs and preparations which were all certainly good and useful in
the case of an infection, out of which or with which physicians might
make an infinite variety of medicines, as the ringers of bells make
several hundred different rounds of music by the changing and order of
sound but in six bells; and that all these preparations shall[340] be
really very good. "Therefore," said he, "I do not wonder that so vast a
throng of medicines is offered in the present calamity, and almost every
physician prescribes or prepares a different thing, as his judgment or
experience guides him; but," says my friend, "let all the prescriptions
of all the physicians in London be examined, and it will be found that
they are all compounded of the same things, with such variations only as
the particular fancy of the doctor leads him to; so that," says he,
"every man, judging a little of his own constitution and manner of his
living, and circumstances of his being infected, may direct his own
medicines out of the ordinary drugs and preparations. Only that," says
he, "some recommend one thing as most sovereign, and some another.
Some," says he, "think that Pill. Ruff., which is called itself the
antipestilential pill, is the best preparation that can be made; others
think that Venice treacle[341] is sufficient of itself to resist the
contagion; and I," says he, "think as both these think, viz., that the
first is good to take beforehand to prevent it, and the last, if
touched, to expel it." According to this opinion, I several times took
Venice treacle, and a sound sweat upon it, and thought myself as well
fortified against the infection as any one could be fortified by the
power of physic.

As for quackery and mountebank, of which the town was so full, I
listened to none of them, and observed often since, with some wonder,
that for two years after the plague I scarcely ever heard one of them
about the town. Some fancied they were all swept away in the infection
to a man