erson being sick in his house (that is
to say, having signs of the infection)--but they found so many ways to
evade this and excuse their negligence that they seldom gave that notice
till they had taken measures to have every one escape out of the house
who had a mind to escape, whether they were sick or sound; and while
this was so, it is easy to see that the shutting up of houses was no
way to be depended upon as a sufficient method for putting a stop to the
infection because, as I have said elsewhere, many of those that so went
out of those infected houses had the plague really upon them, though
they might really think themselves sound. And some of these were the
people that walked the streets till they fell down dead, not that they
were suddenly struck with the distemper as with a bullet that killed
with the stroke, but that they really had the infection in their blood
long before; only, that as it preyed secretly on the vitals, it appeared
not till it seized the heart with a mortal power, and the patient died
in a moment, as with a sudden fainting or an apoplectic fit.

I know that some even of our physicians thought for a time that those
people that so died in the streets were seized but that moment they
fell, as if they had been touched by a stroke from heaven as men are
killed by a flash of lightning--but they found reason to alter their
opinion afterward; for upon examining the bodies of such after they were
dead, they always either had tokens upon them or other evident proofs
of the distemper having been longer upon them than they had otherwise
expected.

This often was the reason that, as I have said, we that were examiners
were not able to come at the knowledge of the infection being entered
into a house till it was too late to shut it up, and sometimes not till
the people that were left were all dead. In Petticoat Lane two houses
together were infected, and several people sick; but the distemper was
so well concealed, the examiner, who was my neighbour, got no knowledge
of it till notice was sent him that the people were all dead, and that
the carts should call there to fetch them away. The two heads of the
families concerted their measures, and so ordered their matters as that
when the examiner was in the neighbourhood they appeared generally at a
time, and answered, that is, lied, for one another, or got some of
the neighbourhood to say they were all in health--and perhaps knew no
better--till, death mak