nfect others.

There have been great debates among our physicians as to the reason of
this. Some will have it to be in the nature of the disease, and that it
impresses every one that is seized upon by it with a kind of a rage, and
a hatred against their own kind--as if there was a malignity not only
in the distemper to communicate itself, but in the very nature of man,
prompting him with evil will or an evil eye, that, as they say in the
case of a mad dog, who though the gentlest creature before of any of his
kind, yet then will fly upon and bite any one that comes next him, and
those as soon as any who had been most observed by him before.

Others placed it to the account of the corruption of human nature, who
cannot bear to see itself more miserable than others of its own species,
and has a kind of involuntary wish that all men were as unhappy or in as
bad a condition as itself.

Others say it was only a kind of desperation, not knowing or regarding
what they did, and consequently unconcerned at the danger or safety not
only of anybody near them, but even of themselves also. And indeed,
when men are once come to a condition to abandon themselves, and be
unconcerned for the safety or at the danger of themselves, it cannot
be so much wondered that they should be careless of the safety of other
people.

But I choose to give this grave debate a quite different turn, and
answer it or resolve it all by saying that I do not grant the fact. On
the contrary, I say that the thing is not really so, but that it was a
general complaint raised by the people inhabiting the outlying villages
against the citizens to justify, or at least excuse, those hardships and
severities so much talked of, and in which complaints both sides may be
said to have injured one another; that is to say, the citizens pressing
to be received and harboured in time of distress, and with the plague
upon them, complain of the cruelty and injustice of the country people
in being refused entrance and forced back again with their goods and
families; and the inhabitants, finding themselves so imposed upon, and
the citizens breaking in as it were upon them whether they would or no,
complain that when they were infected they were not only regardless of
others, but even willing to infect them; neither of which were really
true--that is to say, in the colours they were described in.

It is true there is something to be said for the frequent alarms which
were give