Даниэль Дефо - History of the Plague in London

And this is the reason why it is impossible in a visitation to prevent the spreading of the plague by the utmost human vigilance; viz., that it is impossible to know the infected people from the sound, or that the infected people should perfectly know themselves. I knew a man who conversed freely in London all the season of the plague in 1665, and kept about him an antidote or cordial, on purpose to take when he thought himself in any danger; and he had such a rule to know, or have warning of the danger by, as indeed 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 sound, and the infection began to affect him, he said he could know it by that signal, viz., that the wound in his leg would smart, and look pale and white: so as soon as ever he felt it smart it was time for him to withdraw, or to take care of himself, taking his drink, which he always carried about him for that purpose. Now, it seems he found his wound would smart many times when he was in company with such who thought themselves to be sound, and who appeared so to one another; but he would presently rise up, and say publicly, "Friends, here is somebody in the room that has the plague," and so would immediately break up the company. This was, indeed, a faithful monitor to all people, that the plague is not to be avoided by those that converse promiscuously in a town infected, and people have it when they know it not, and that they likewise give it to others when they know not that they have it themselves; and in this case, 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 conversed with, even before they knew themselves to be sick; and none knows how far to carry that back, or where to stop, for none knows when, or where, or how, they may have received the infection, or from whom.

This I take to be the reason which makes so many people talk of the air being corrupted and infected, and that they need not be cautious of whom they converse with, for that the contagion was in the air. I have seen them in strange agitations and surprises on this account. "I have never come near any infected body," says the disturbed person; "I have conversed with none but sound healthy people, and yet I have gotten the distemper." "I am sure I am struck from Heaven," says another, and he falls to the serious part. [262] "Falls to the serious part," i.e., begins to discourse on serious matters. Again the first goes on exclaiming, "I have come near no infection, or any infected person; I am sure it is in the air; we draw in death when we breathe, and therefore it is the hand of God: there is no withstanding it." And this at last made many people, being hardened to the danger, grow less concerned at it, and less cautious towards the latter end of the time, and when it was come to its height, than they were at first. Then, with a kind of a Turkish predestinarianism, [263] See note, p. 28. The Mohammedans are fatalists. {Transcriber's note: The reference is to footnote 28.} they would say, if it pleased God to strike them, it was all one whether they went abroad, or staid at home: they could not escape it. And therefore they went boldly about, even into infected houses and infected company, visited sick people, and, in short, lay in the beds with their wives or relations when they were infected. And what was the consequence but the same that is the consequence in Turkey, and in those countries where they do those things, namely, that they were infected too, and died by hundreds and thousands?

I would be far from lessening the awe of the judgments of God, and the reverence to his providence, which ought always to be on our minds on such occasions as these. Doubtless the visitation itself is a stroke from Heaven upon a city, or country, or nation, where it falls; a messenger of his vengeance, and a loud call to that nation, or country, or city, to humiliation and repentance, according to that of the prophet Jeremiah (xviii. 7, 8): "At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them." Now, to prompt due impressions of the awe of God on the minds of men on such occasions, and not to lessen them, it is that I have left those minutes upon record.

I say, therefore, I reflect upon no man for putting the reason of those things upon the immediate hand of God and the appointment and direction of his providence; nay, on the contrary, there were many wonderful deliverances of persons from infection, and deliverances of persons when infected, which intimate singular and remarkable providence in the particular instances to which they refer; and I esteem my own deliverance to be one next to miraculous, and do record it with thankfulness.

But when I am speaking of the plague as a distemper arising from natural causes, we must consider it as it was really propagated by natural means. Nor is it at all the less a judgment for its being under the conduct of human causes and effects; for as the Divine Power has formed the whole scheme of nature, and maintains nature in its course, so the same Power thinks fit to let his own actings with men, whether of mercy or judgment, to go on in the ordinary course of natural causes, and he is pleased to act by those natural causes as the ordinary means, excepting and reserving to himself, nevertheless, a power to act in a supernatural way when he sees occasion. Now it is evident, that, in the case of an infection, there is no apparent extraordinary occasion for supernatural operation; but the ordinary course of things appears sufficiently armed, and made capable of all the effects that Heaven usually directs by a contagion. Among these causes and effects, this of the secret conveyance of infection, imperceptible and unavoidable, is more than sufficient to execute the fierceness of divine vengeance, without putting it upon supernaturals and miracles.

The acute, penetrating nature of the disease itself was such, and the infection was received so imperceptibly, that the most exact caution could not secure us while in the place; but I must be allowed to believe—and I have so many examples fresh in my memory to convince me of it, that I think none can resist their evidence,—I say, I must be allowed to believe that no one in this whole nation ever received the sickness or infection, but who received it in the ordinary way of infection from somebody, or the clothes, or touch, or stench of somebody, that was infected before.

The manner of its first coming to London proves this also, viz., by goods brought over from Holland, and brought thither from the Levant; the first breaking of it out in a house in Longacre where those goods were carried and first opened; its spreading from that house to other houses by the visible unwary conversing with those who were sick, and the infecting the parish officers who were employed about persons dead; and the like. These are known authorities for this great foundation point, that it went on and proceeded from person to person, and from house to house, and no otherwise. In the first house that was infected, there died four persons. A neighbor, hearing the mistress of the first house was sick, went to visit her, and went home and gave the distemper to her family, and died, and all her household. A minister called to pray with the first sick person in the second house was said to sicken immediately, and die, with several more in his house. Then the physicians began to consider, for they did not at first dream of a general contagion; but the physicians being sent to inspect the bodies, they assured the people that it was neither more or less than the plague, with all its terrifying particulars, and that it threatened an universal infection; so many people having already conversed with the sick or distempered, and having, as might be supposed, received infection from them, that it would be impossible to put a stop to it.