re,
who were in apprehension of the infection before it came among them.

This, however, is certain, not a man of them appeared for a great while
in or about London. There were, indeed, several doctors who published
bills recommending their several physical preparations for cleansing the
body, as they call it, after the plague, and needful, as they said, for
such people to take who had been visited and had been cured; whereas
I must own I believe that it was the opinion of the most eminent
physicians at that time that the plague was itself a sufficient purge,
and that those who escaped the infection needed no physic to cleanse
their bodies of any other things; the running sores, the tumours, &c.,
which were broke and kept open by the directions of the physicians,
having sufficiently cleansed them; and that all other distempers, and
causes of distempers, were effectually carried off that way; and as the
physicians gave this as their opinions wherever they came, the quacks
got little business.

There were, indeed, several little hurries which happened after the
decrease of the plague, and which, whether they were contrived to fright
and disorder the people, as some imagined, I cannot say, but sometimes
we were told the plague would return by such a time; and the famous
Solomon Eagle, the naked Quaker I have mentioned, prophesied evil
tidings every day; and several others telling us that London had not
been sufficiently scourged, and that sorer and severer strokes were yet
behind. Had they stopped there, or had they descended to particulars,
and told us that the city should the next year be destroyed by fire,
then, indeed, when we had seen it come to pass, we should not have been
to blame to have paid more than a common respect to their prophetic
spirits; at least we should have wondered at them, and have been more
serious in our inquiries after the meaning of it, and whence they had
the foreknowledge. But as they generally told us of a relapse into
the plague, we have had no concern since that about them; yet by those
frequent clamours, we were all kept with some kind of apprehensions
constantly upon us; and if any died suddenly, or if the spotted fevers
at any time increased, we were presently alarmed; much more if the
number of the plague increased, for to the end of the year there were
always between 200 and 300 of the plague. On any of these occasions, I
say, we were alarmed anew.

Those who remember the city of Lo