but about two hours
after they came home the young lady complained she was not well; in a
quarter of an hour more she vomited and had a violent pain in her head.
'Pray God', says her mother, in a terrible fright, 'my child has not the
distemper!' The pain in her head increasing, her mother ordered the bed
to be warmed, and resolved to put her to bed, and prepared to give her
things to sweat, which was the ordinary remedy to be taken when the
first apprehensions of the distemper began.

While the bed was airing the mother undressed the young woman, and
just as she was laid down in the bed, she, looking upon her body with
a candle, immediately discovered the fatal tokens on the inside of her
thighs. Her mother, not being able to contain herself, threw down her
candle and shrieked out in such a frightful manner that it was enough to
place horror upon the stoutest heart in the world; nor was it one scream
or one cry, but the fright having seized her spirits, she--fainted
first, then recovered, then ran all over the house, up the stairs and
down the stairs, like one distracted, and indeed really was distracted,
and continued screeching and crying out for several hours void of all
sense, or at least government of her senses, and, as I was told, never
came thoroughly to herself again. As to the young maiden, she was a dead
corpse from that moment, for the gangrene which occasions the spots had
spread [over] her whole body, and she died in less than two hours. But
still the mother continued crying out, not knowing anything more of her
child, several hours after she was dead. It is so long ago that I am
not certain, but I think the mother never recovered, but died in two or
three weeks after.

This was an extraordinary case, and I am therefore the more particular
in it, because I came so much to the knowledge of it; but there were
innumerable such-like cases, and it was seldom that the weekly bill came
in but there were two or three put in, 'frighted'; that is, that may
well be called frighted to death. But besides those who were so frighted
as to die upon the spot, there were great numbers frighted to other
extremes, some frighted out of their senses, some out of their memory,
and some out of their understanding. But I return to the shutting up of
houses.

As several people, I say, got out of their houses by stratagem after
they were shut UP, so others got out by bribing the watchmen, and giving
them money to let them go pr