the malignity of the
disease abated.

Such is the precipitant disposition of our people (whether it is so
or not all over the world, that's none of my particular business to
inquire), but I saw it apparently here, that as upon the first fright
of the infection they shunned one another, and fled from one another's
houses and from the city with an unaccountable and, as I thought,
unnecessary fright, so now, upon this notion spreading, viz., that the
distemper was not so catching as formerly, and that if it was catched it
was not so mortal, and seeing abundance of people who really fell sick
recover again daily, they took to such a precipitant courage, and grew
so entirely regardless of themselves and of the infection, that they
made no more of the plague than of an ordinary fever, nor indeed so
much. They not only went boldly into company with those who had tumours
and carbuncles upon them that were running, and consequently contagious,
but ate and drank with them, nay, into their houses to visit them, and
even, as I was told, into their very chambers where they lay sick.

This I could not see rational. My friend Dr Heath allowed, and it was
plain to experience, that the distemper was as catching as ever, and as
many fell sick, but only he alleged that so many of those that fell sick
did not die; but I think that while many did die, and that at best
the distemper itself was very terrible, the sores and swellings very
tormenting, and the danger of death not left out of the circumstances of
sickness, though not so frequent as before; all those things, together
with the exceeding tediousness of the cure, the loathsomeness of the
disease, and many other articles, were enough to deter any man living
from a dangerous mixture with the sick people, and make them as anxious
almost to avoid the infections as before.

Nay, there was another thing which made the mere catching of the
distemper frightful, and that was the terrible burning of the caustics
which the surgeons laid on the swellings to bring them to break and to
run, without which the danger of death was very great, even to the last.
Also, the insufferable torment of the swellings, which, though it might
not make people raving and distracted, as they were before, and as I
have given several instances of already, yet they put the patient to
inexpressible torment; and those that fell into it, though they did
escape with life, yet they made bitter complaints of those that h