The Plague of 1665 by Emma Laybourn

Author:Emma Laybourn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: black death, bubonic plague, history of medicine
Publisher: Emma Laybourn

Part 16

How the Plague is Transmitted

And here let me again describe the miserable condition of the City itself, and those parts where I lived at this time. Although great numbers were gone into the country, the City was vastly full of people; and perhaps the fuller because people had for a long time a strong belief that the plague would not come there. They were so sure of this that many moved from the suburbs on the west and north sides, into the eastern and south sides, for safety; and, I believe, carried the plague with them.

Even apparently well people could transmit the plague. They had it in their blood, yet did not show it for many days, and were not aware of it. These people breathed death in every place, and upon everybody who came near them; their very clothes retained the infection, and their hands would infect the things they touched, especially if they were warm and sweaty.

These were the people that so often dropped down and fainted in the streets; for often they would go about the streets to the end, till suddenly they would sweat, grow faint, sit down at a door and die. Sometimes they would struggle hard to get home, where they might die instantly. Other times they might come home still seeming well, and die an hour or two afterwards. These were the dangerous people; these were the people of whom we ought to have been afraid; but it was impossible to know who they were.

And this is the reason why it is impossible to prevent the spreading of the plague by the utmost human vigilance: because it is impossible to know the infected people from the heathy.

I knew a man who met people freely in London all through the plague in 1665, and kept about him an antidote to take when he thought himself in any danger, and he had a rule to have warning of the danger such as I never met with before or since. How far it may be depended on I know not. He had a wound in his leg, and whenever he came among any people that were not healthy, and the infection began to affect him, he said he could tell because the wound in his leg would smart, and look pale. As soon as he felt it smart, he withdrew, and took his antidote.

Now it seems his wound would often smart when he was in company with apparently healthy people; but he would rise up and announce, ‘Friends, there is somebody in the room that has the plague’, and so would immediately break up the company.

This demonstrates that the plague cannot be avoided by those that move freely about the town, because of the numbers of people who do not know they have it. Shutting up the well or removing the sick will not do it, unless they can go back and shut up all those that the sick had talked to, even before they

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