plague, with all its terrifying particulars, and that it threatened an
universal infection, so many people having already conversed with
the sick or distempered, and having, as might be supposed, received
infection from them, that it would be impossible to put a stop to it.

Here the opinion of the physicians agreed with my observation
afterwards, namely, that the danger was spreading insensibly, for the
sick could infect none but those that came within reach of the sick
person; but that one man who may have really received the infection and
knows it not, but goes abroad and about as a sound person, may give the
plague to a thousand people, and they to greater numbers in proportion,
and neither the person giving the infection or the persons receiving it
know anything of it, and perhaps not feel the effects of it for several
days after.

For example, many persons in the time of this visitation never perceived
that they were infected till they found to their unspeakable surprise,
the tokens come out upon them; after which they seldom lived six hours;
for those spots they called the tokens were really gangrene spots, or
mortified flesh in small knobs as broad as a little silver penny, and
hard as a piece of callus or horn; so that, when the disease was come
up to that length, there was nothing could follow but certain death;
and yet, as I said, they knew nothing of their being infected, nor found
themselves so much as out of order, till those mortal marks were upon
them. But everybody must allow that they were infected in a high degree
before, And must have been so some time, and consequently their breath,
their sweat, their very clothes, were contagious for many days before.
This occasioned a vast variety of cases which physicians would have much
more opportunity to remember than I; but some came within the compass of
my observation or hearing, of which I shall name a few.

A certain citizen who had lived safe and untouched till the month of
September, when the weight of the distemper lay more in the city than it
had done before, was mighty cheerful, and something too bold (as I think
it was) in his talk of how secure he was, how cautious he had been,
and how he had never come near any sick body. Says another citizen, a
neighbour of his, to him one day, 'Do not be too confident, Mr--; it is
hard to say who is sick and who is well, for we see men alive and well
to outward appearance one hour, and dead the next.' 'That is