of the town.

In the execution of this office I could not refrain speaking my opinion
among my neighbours as to this shutting up the people in their houses;
in which we saw most evidently the severities that were used, though
grievous in themselves, had also this particular objection against them:
namely, that they did not answer the end, as I have said, but that the
distempered people went day by day about the streets; and it was our
united opinion that a method to have removed the sound from the sick,
in case of a particular house being visited, would have been much more
reasonable on many accounts, leaving nobody with the sick persons but
such as should on such occasion request to stay and declare themselves
content to be shut up with them.

Our scheme for removing those that were sound from those that were sick
was only in such houses as were infected, and confining the sick was
no confinement; those that could not stir would not complain while they
were in their senses and while they had the power of judging. Indeed,
when they came to be delirious and light-headed, then they would cry out
of the cruelty of being confined; but for the removal of those that were
well, we thought it highly reasonable and just, for their own sakes,
they should be removed from the sick, and that for other people's safety
they should keep retired for a while, to see that they were sound, and
might not infect others; and we thought twenty or thirty days enough for
this.

Now, certainly, if houses had been provided on purpose for those that
were sound to perform this demi-quarantine in, they would have much less
reason to think themselves injured in such a restraint than in being
confined with infected people in the houses where they lived.

It is here, however, to be observed that after the funerals became so
many that people could not toll the bell, mourn or weep, or wear black
for one another, as they did before; no, nor so much as make coffins for
those that died; so after a while the fury of the infection appeared to
be so increased that, in short, they shut up no houses at all. It seemed
enough that all the remedies of that kind had been used till they were
found fruitless, and that the plague spread itself with an irresistible
fury; so that as the fire the succeeding year spread itself, and burned
with such violence that the citizens, in despair, gave over their
endeavours to extinguish it, so in the plague it came at last to su