to be contagious to others
above fifteen or sixteen days at furthest; and on that score it was,
that when a house was shut up in the city and any one had died of the
plague, but nobody appeared to be ill in the family for sixteen or
eighteen days after, they were not so strict but that they would connive
at their going privately abroad; nor would people be much afraid of them
afterward, but rather think they were fortified the better, having not
been vulnerable when the enemy was in their own house; but we sometimes
found it had lain much longer concealed.

Upon the foot of all these observations I must say that though
Providence seemed to direct my conduct to be otherwise, yet it is my
opinion, and I must leave it as a prescription, viz., that the best
physic against the plague is to run away from it. I know people
encourage themselves by saying God is able to keep us in the midst of
danger, and able to overtake us when we think ourselves out of danger;
and this kept thousands in the town whose carcases went into the great
pits by cartloads, and who, if they had fled from the danger, had, I
believe, been safe from the disaster; at least 'tis probable they had
been safe.

And were this very fundamental only duly considered by the people on any
future occasion of this or the like nature, I am persuaded it would put
them upon quite different measures for managing the people from those
that they took in 1665, or than any that have been taken abroad that I
have heard of. In a word, they would consider of separating the
people into smaller bodies, and removing them in time farther from one
another--and not let such a contagion as this, which is indeed chiefly
dangerous to collected bodies of people, find a million of people in a
body together, as was very near the case before, and would certainly be
the case if it should ever appear again.

The plague, like a great fire, if a few houses only are contiguous where
it happens, can only burn a few houses; or if it begins in a single,
or, as we call it, a lone house, can only burn that lone house where it
begins. But if it begins in a close-built town or city and gets a head,
there its fury increases: it rages over the whole place, and consumes
all it can reach.

I could propose many schemes on the foot of which the government of this
city, if ever they should be under the apprehensions of such another
enemy (God forbid they should), might ease themselves of the greatest
pa