r the
truth; for, while there was no mention of the plague, and no increase
after it had been mentioned, yet it was apparent that there was an
increase of those distempers which bordered nearest upon it; for
example, there were eight, twelve, seventeen of the spotted fever in
a week, when there were none, or but very few, of the plague; whereas
before, one, three, or four were the ordinary weekly numbers of that
distemper. Likewise, as I observed before, the burials increased weekly
in that particular parish and the parishes adjacent more than in any
other parish, although there were none set down of the plague; all which
tells us, that the infection was handed on, and the succession of the
distemper really preserved, though it seemed to us at that time to be
ceased, and to come again in a manner surprising.

It might be, also, that the infection might remain in other parts of the
same parcel of goods which at first it came in, and which might not be
perhaps opened, or at least not fully, or in the clothes of the first
infected person; for I cannot think that anybody could be seized with
the contagion in a fatal and mortal degree for nine weeks together,
and support his state of health so well as even not to discover it to
themselves; yet if it were so, the argument is the stronger in favour
of what I am saying: namely, that the infection is retained in bodies
apparently well, and conveyed from them to those they converse with,
while it is known to neither the one nor the other.

Great were the confusions at that time upon this very account, and when
people began to be convinced that the infection was received in this
surprising manner from persons apparently well, they began to be
exceeding shy and jealous of every one that came near them. Once, on a
public day, whether a Sabbath-day or not I do not remember, in Aldgate
Church, in a pew full of people, on a sudden one fancied she smelt an
ill smell. Immediately she fancies the plague was in the pew, whispers
her notion or suspicion to the next, then rises and goes out of the pew.
It immediately took with the next, and so to them all; and every one of
them, and of the two or three adjoining pews, got up and went out of the
church, nobody knowing what it was offended them, or from whom.

This immediately filled everybody's mouths with one preparation or
other, such as the old woman directed, and some perhaps as physicians
directed, in order to prevent infection by the