he great Apprehensions that all Europe has received from the dreadful and raging Plague which has lately destroyed the greatest Part of the Inhabitants of Marseilles, has given that just Alarm to our Ministry, who under the Direction of His Majesty, by their wise and prudent Management, to the Duty of Publick Prayers, with that of a General and Solemn Fast throughout the Kingdom, have not been wanting, as much as possible, to prevent that direful Contagion which now threatens, and might be brought amongst us by the Sailors, or by Merchandize comeing from Places that are infected; and have ordered a strict Quarentine to be observed by all Ships in all the Maritime Ports liable to that Invasion.
And to be Assistant to so great a Work, the Neglect of which the Lives of the Nation being at stake, we have some the most eminent of the Physicians now in Vogue, who from that Duty to their Profession, and their Zeal to the Publick Good, have publish’d some Essays, not only of the Nature, Cause, Symptoms, Prognosticks, and Affections of this fatal Distemper; but likewise of the proper Means to be used in preventing, and fortifying against, with the proper Applications of recovering those that are seiz’d by this fatal Enemy to Mankind. Books of this kind lately published are, a short Discourse concerning Pestilential Contagion, by Dr. Mead. The Plague of Marseilles consider’d by Dr. Bradley. Dr. Hodges’s Loimologia of the Plague in London, Anno 1665; reprinted by Dr. Quincy: To which is added, an Essay of his own, with Remarks of the Infection now in France. To those worthy Gentlemen are we indebted for their ready Help, to their philosophical Enquiries, their learned and analytical Explanations in all the Stages of this raging Ill; and farther, by what physical Power it corrupts the Blood, destroys the Spirits, and is follow’d by Death at the last.
The Apologies that are made in their Preface, viz. of a short Warning, of their little Leisure, the Uncorrectness of Style, and the Typographical Errors should be favourably construed from so great an Aim of doing the Publick so great a Good; and it would be esteemed a base Ingratitude, meerly for the sake of Contradiction, to quarrel with the Hand that directs, and may support us in the greatest Extremity.
But where there may be a sufficient Reason to undeceive, or amend such Errors, as might otherwise be prejudicial to their intended Purpose of preserving the Common Weal, or advancing some other necessary Instructions which they have omitted; I can’t but perswade myself that I shall have their Approbation, if not their Thanks in prosecuting the Advancement of that good End they so greatly have desired in their Publications.
It is very certain, that Essay of Doctor Hodges de Peste, is the best of any hitherto publish’d of that Kind; and if the Gentleman who has annex’d his Treatise to that of his own, has taken Care to remove the most affected Peculiarities, and Luxuriances of his Enthusiastick Strain, he should have avoided that Contagion himself, which are discover’d in his crabbed and dogmatical Terms of Formulæ, Miasms, Miasmata, Nexus, Moleculæ, Spicula, Pabulum, &c. Such Terms being too abstruse and difficult to be understood by the People in general, for whose Instruction and Benefit we have the Charity to believe he undertook his Publication. Nay, it cannot be doubted, and will need no Confirmation by those that carefully peruse Dr. Hodges, but will find that there is scarcely any advanced Method in what they have writ, or but what may be found in his Treatise, unless in this one Hint of Quincy, from the Use of Pulvis Fluminans in dispersing the stagnate Air instead of the fucing of great Guns, &c. And he is no ways out in his Policy by tacking his own Remarks with those of the good old Doctors, which are the best Recommendations of their passing to his own Advantage.
Hodges in his Introduction tells you, “That the first Discoveries of the late Plague began in Westminster, about the Close of the Year 1664, for at that Season two or three Persons died there, attended with like Symptoms as manifestly declar’d their Origin; that in the Months of August and September, the Contagion chang’d its former slow and languid Pace, having, as it were, got Master of all, made a most terrible Slaughter, so that three, four or five thousand died in a Week, and once eight thousand: Who can express the Calamities of those Times! None surely in more pathetick and bewailing Accents than himself, who gives us so melancholly a Description of their dismal Misery, as affects the Mind with the same Passions and despairing Sorrow they were then overloaded with; and as Virgil has it,
Horror ubique Animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent.
Hærent in fixi pectore Vultus.
The British Nation wept for the Miseries of her Metropolis. In some Houses Carcases lay waiting for Burial; and in others, Persons in their last Agonies; in one Room might be heard dying Groans, in another the Raveings of a Delirium, and not far off Relations and Friends bewailing both their Loss and the dismal Prospect of their own sudden Departure; Death was the sure Midwife to all Children, and Infants passed immediately from the Womb to the Grave; Who would not burst with Grief to see the Stock of a future Generation hang upon the Breasts of a dead Mother? or the Marriage-Bed changed the first Night into a Sepulchre, and the unhappy Pair meet with Death in the first Embraces? Some of the Infected run about staggering like drunken Men, and fall and expire in the Streets; while others lie half dead and comatous, but never to be waked but by the last Trumpet; some lie vomiting, as if they had drank Poison; and others fall dead in the Market while they are buying Necessaries for the Support of Life.
Not much unlike was it in the following Conflagration; where the Altars themselves became so many Victims, and the finest Churches in the whole World carried up to Heaven Supplications in Flames, while their marble Pillars, wet with Tears, melted like Wax; nor were Monuments secure from the inexorable Flames, where many of their venerable Remains passed a second Martyrdom; the most august Palaces were soon laid waste, and the Flames seem’d to be in a fatal Engagement to destroy the great Ornament of Commerce; and the burning of all the Commodities of the World together, seem’d a proper Epitome of this Conflagration: Neither confederate Crowns, nor the drawn Swords of Kings could restrain its phanatick and rebellious Rage; large Halls, stately Houses, and the Sheds of the Poor, were together reduced to Ashes; the Sun blush’d to see himself set, and envied those Flames the Government of the Night which had rivall’d him so many Days: As the City, I say, was afterwards burnt without any Distinction, in like Manner did this Plague spare no Order, Age, or Sex; the Divine was taken in the very Exercise of his priestly Office, to be inroll’d amongst the Saints above; and some Physicians, as before intimated, could not find Assistance in their own Antidotes, but died in the Administration of them to others; and although the Soldiery retreated from the Field of Death, and encamped out of the City, the Contagion followed and vanquished them; many in their old Age, others in their Prime, sunk under its Cruelties; of the female Sex, most died; and hardly any Children escaped; and it was not uncommon to see an Inheritance pass successively to three or four Heirs in as many Days; the Number of Sextons were not sufficient to bury the Dead; the Bells seem’d hoarse with continual tolling, until at last they quite ceased; the Burying-places would not hold the Dead, but they were thrown into large Pits dug in waste Grounds in Heaps, thirty or forty together; and it often happened, that those who attended the Funerals of their Friends one Evening, were carried the next to their own long Home.”