very great number did so, and offered
all sorts of violence to those they met, even just as a mad dog runs on
and bites at every one he meets; nor can I doubt but that, should one
of those infected, diseased creatures have bitten any man or woman while
the frenzy of the distemper was upon them, they, I mean the person so
wounded, would as certainly have been incurably infected as one that was
sick before, and had the tokens upon him.

I heard of one infected creature who, running out of his bed in his
shirt in the anguish and agony of his swellings, of which he had three
upon him, got his shoes on and went to put on his coat; but the nurse
resisting, and snatching the coat from him, he threw her down, ran over
her, ran downstairs and into the street, directly to the Thames in his
shirt; the nurse running after him, and calling to the watch to stop
him; but the watchman, frighted at the man, and afraid to touch him, let
him go on; upon which he ran down to the Stillyard stairs, threw away
his shirt, and plunged into the Thames, and, being a good swimmer, swam
quite over the river; and the tide being coming in, as they call it
(that is, running westward) he reached the land not till he came about
the Falcon stairs, where landing, and finding no people there, it being
in the night, he ran about the streets there, naked as he was, for a
good while, when, it being by that time high water, he takes the river
again, and swam back to the Stillyard, landed, ran up the streets again
to his own house, knocking at the door, went up the stairs and into his
bed again; and that this terrible experiment cured him of the plague,
that is to say, that the violent motion of his arms and legs stretched
the parts where the swellings he had upon him were, that is to say,
under his arms and his groin, and caused them to ripen and break; and
that the cold of the water abated the fever in his blood.

I have only to add that I do not relate this any more than some of the
other, as a fact within my own knowledge, so as that I can vouch
the truth of them, and especially that of the man being cured by the
extravagant adventure, which I confess I do not think very possible; but
it may serve to confirm the many desperate things which the distressed
people falling into deliriums, and what we call light-headedness, were
frequently run upon at that time, and how infinitely more such there
would have been if such people had not been confined by the shutt