n that manner till he fell down
and died.

No wonder the aspect of the city itself was frightful. The usual
concourse of people in the streets, and which used to be supplied from
our end of the town, was abated. The Exchange was not kept shut, indeed,
but it was no more frequented. The fires were lost; they had been almost
extinguished for some days by a very smart and hasty rain. But that
was not all; some of the physicians insisted that they were not only no
benefit, but injurious to the health of people. This they made a loud
clamour about, and complained to the Lord Mayor about it. On the other
hand, others of the same faculty, and eminent too, opposed them, and
gave their reasons why the fires were, and must be, useful to assuage
the violence of the distemper. I cannot give a full account of their
arguments on both sides; only this I remember, that they cavilled very
much with one another. Some were for fires, but that they must be made
of wood and not coal, and of particular sorts of wood too, such as fir
in particular, or cedar, because of the strong effluvia of turpentine;
others were for coal and not wood, because of the sulphur and bitumen;
and others were for neither one or other. Upon the whole, the Lord Mayor
ordered no more fires, and especially on this account, namely, that the
plague was so fierce that they saw evidently it defied all means, and
rather seemed to increase than decrease upon any application to check
and abate it; and yet this amazement of the magistrates proceeded rather
from want of being able to apply any means successfully than from any
unwillingness either to expose themselves or undertake the care and
weight of business; for, to do them justice, they neither spared their
pains nor their persons. But nothing answered; the infection raged, and
the people were now frighted and terrified to the last degree: so
that, as I may say, they gave themselves up, and, as I mentioned above,
abandoned themselves to their despair.

But let me observe here that, when I say the people abandoned themselves
to despair, I do not mean to what men call a religious despair, or a
despair of their eternal state, but I mean a despair of their being able
to escape the infection or to outlive the plague which they saw was so
raging and so irresistible in its force that indeed few people that were
touched with it in its height, about August and September, escaped; and,
which is very particular, contrary to its or