It would be well if their Opposition ended here; but when it affects us more near, when their Difference becomes more wide in the very Means of our Preservation, and what by one is laid down as a soveraign and real Good, to be returned by another as the most fatal and destructive, is a Weight of no small Consequence, nor a less melancholly Reflection, if it should please God to inflict us with the same Calamities.
And as to those preservative Means which the Government have only a Power to direct, the making of large Fires in the Streets, as has been practised in the Times of Contagion, is a Point largely contested.
Dr. Hodges[18] seems inveterate against this Custom, and tells us, ‘That before three Days were expired after the Fires made in 1665, the most fatal Night ensued, wherein more than 4000 expired; the Heavens both mourn’d so many Funerals, and wept for the fatal Mistake, so as to extinguish even the Fires with their Showers. May Posterity, (says he) be warned by this Mistake, and not like Empericks, apply a Remedy where they are ignorant of the Cause.’
And Dr. Mead[19] has an Eye to this Remark, when he tells us, ‘The fatal Success of the Trials in the last Plague is more than sufficient to discourage any farther Attempts of this Nature.’ Whereas on the contrary, the making of Fires in the Streets were practised from the greatest Antiquity, and supported by Mayerne, Butler, and Harvey in the two great Plagues before the Year 1665, and recommended by Dr. Quincey[20] for the Dissipation of Pestilential Vapours, &c. And without all manner of Dispute, Dr. Bradley[21] must be wholly on his Side, when he tells us, ‘That the Year 1665, was the last that we can say raged in London, which might happen from the Destruction of the City by Fire the following Year 1666, and besides the destroying of the Eggs or Seeds of those poisonous Animals that were then in the stagnating Air, might likewise purifie the Air in such a Manner as to make it unfit for the Nourishment of others of the same kind, which were swimming or driving in the circumambient Air.’
What has been said of Fires is likewise to be understood of firing of Guns, which some have too rashly advised. Says Dr. Mead[22], ‘The proper Correction of the Air would be to make it fresh and cool.’ And here quotes from the Practice of the Arabians out of Rhazes de re Medica, &c. Dr. Quincey[23] ‘That as the Air being still and as it were stagnate at such Times, and as it favours the Collection of poisonous Effluvia, and aggravates Infection, thinks it more effectual to let off small Parcels of the common Pulvis Fulminans, which must afford a greater Shock to the Air by its Explosion than by the largest Pieces of Ordnance.’ In favour of which last Assertion, the Experience both of Soldiers, will justifie the firing of great Guns and Ordnance, which is frequently used in Camps, for the Dissipation of the collected pestilential Atoms, which by Concussion as well as its constituent Parts of Nitre and Sulphur, tend greatly to the Purification of the grosser Atmosphere within the Compass of their Activity; and by the Seamen in their Voyages in the Southern Parts of the World, when sometimes the Air is so gross, and hangs so low upon them, as to be almost suffocated. And in the late Plague at Marseilles the constant firing of great Guns at Morning and Evening, by the Appointment of Monsieur le Marquis de Langeron their Governour, was esteemed of great Relief to the Inhabitants.
Nay, their Contest will not end in a Pipe of Tobacco, against which Dr. Hodges[24] declares himself a profess’d Enemy: ‘But whether (says he) we regard the narcotick Quality of this American Henbane; or the poisonous Oil which exhales from it in Smoaking, or that prodigious Discharge of Spittle which it occasions, and which Nature wants for many other important Occasions, besides the Aptitude of the pestilential Poison to be taken down along with it; he chose rather to supply its Place with Sack.’
Dr. Bradley[25] redeems it from this low Character, and represents it as a great Antidote in the last Plague Anno 1665. ‘The Distemper did not reach those who smoak’d Tobacco every Day, but particularly it was judged best to smoak in a Morning: He farther gives you an Account of a famous Physician, who in the pestilential Time took every Morning a Cordial to guard his Stomach, and after that a Pipe or two, before he went to visit his Patients; at the same time he had an Issue in his Arm, by which, when it begun to smart, he knew he had received some Infection (as he says) and then had recourse to his Cordial and his Pipe.’ By this Means only he preserved himself, as several others did at that Time by the same Method.
I could heartily wish those worthy Gentlemen had struck in with greater Harmony to the Satisfaction and Security of the People, whose Expectations were greatly raised by the Hopes of their Assistance, by gaining a greater Light into the Nature, Quality, Symptoms, and Affections of this definitive Ill, to have promoted their Safety, by giving the necessary Indications relating to the Cure, as well as the necessary Precautions in order to guard us from that secret Attack which may approach us by very minute and unheeded Causes; the which, from their different Notions and positive Contradictions, lay too deep from the narrow Re-searches of those Philosophizing and Learned Gentlemen, and for the Manner whereby it kills, its Approaches are generally so secret, that Persons seiz’d with it seem to be fallen into an Ambuscade or a Snare, of which there was no Manner of Suspicion. And there are very few Discourses relating to the Pestilence but what abound in many Instances of this kind: And the Learned Boccace, in his Admirable Description of the Plague at Florence (quoted by Dr. Mead[26] Anno 1348) relates what himself saw, ‘That two Hogs finding in the Streets some Rags which had been thrown off from a poor Man dead of the Disease, after snuffling upon them, and tearing them with their Teeth, fell into Convulsions, and died in less than an Hour.’
The Misfortune which happened in the Island of Bermudas about 25 Years since, which Account is from Dr. Halley; A Sack of Cotton put ashore by Stealth, lay above a Month without any Prejudice to the People of the House where it was hid; but when it came to be distributed among the Inhabitants, it carried such a Contagion along with it, that the Living scarce sufficed to bury the Dead.
And Dr. Quincey[27] has somewhere read a strange Story in Baker’s Chronicle, ‘of a great Rot amongst Sheep, which was not quite rooted out until about Fourteen Years time, that was brought into England by a Sheep bought for its uncommon Largeness, in a Country then infected with the same Distemper.’