No II.
Account of the Great Plague in the time of Justinian:—By Procopius.
THIS was a plague which almost consumed mankind; of which Procopius concludes there was no other cause than the immediate hand of God himself. For it neither came upon one part of the world alone, nor in one season of the year; whence subtile wits (as he saith) might make pretensions. It afflicted the whole world, and all conditions of men, though of never so contrary a nature and disposition; sparing no constitution nor age. The difference of men as to their places of dwelling, diet, complexions, inclinations, &c. did no good in this disease. Some it took in summer, some in winter, and others in other seasons. It began among the Egyptians in Pelusium, and spread to Alexandria, with the rest of Egypt, one way, and the other to those parts of Palestine which border upon Egypt. From thence it travelled to the utmost bounds of the world, as by set journies and stages, making destruction its only business, and sparing neither island, cave, nor top of mountain, where mankind inhabited; for, if it leaped over a country, returning afterwards, it left it no cause to rejoice above its fellows. It began still at the sea coast, and thence went to the inland parts. In the second year of its progress it arrived at Constantinople, about the middle of the spring, where it was the fortune of Procopius then to reside. Apparitions of spirits, in all shapes human, were seen by many, who thought the man they met struck them in some part of the body; and so soon as they saw the spirit they were seized with the disease. At first when they met them they repeated divine names, and fled into churches, to no purpose. Afterwards they were afraid to hear their friends call them, locking themselves up in their chambers, and stopping their ears. Some dreamed they saw such sights; others that they heard a voice tell them they were enrolled among the number of those appointed to die. But most, without warning, became feverish suddenly: their bodies changed not colour, nor were hot; the fever being so remiss till evening, that neither the patient nor physician, by his pulse, could apprehend any danger. Yet to some the same day, to others the next, or many days after, arose a bubo, either in the groin, the armpit, under the ear, or in other parts. These were the general symptoms which happened alike to all the visited persons.
There were others different; whether made so by the diversity of bodies, or by the will and pleasure of him that sent the distemper, our author cannot say. Some were seized with drowsiness and slumbering, others with a sharp distraction. The slumberers forgot all things: if they were looked to, some would eat; some, that were neglected, starved to death. Those who were distracted were vexed with apparitions; crying there were men to kill them; and running away; being so troublesome and unruly that their keepers were pitied as much as they themselves. No physician or other caught the disease by touching sick or dead bodies; many strangely continuing free, though they tended and buried infected persons, and many catching it they knew not how, and dying instantly. Many leapt into the water, though not from thirst; and some into the sea. Some, without slumbering or madness, had their bubo gangrened, and died with extreme pain; which doubtless also happened to those who had the phrensy, though, being not themselves, they understood it not. Some physicians hereupon, conceiving the venom and head of the disease to lie in those plague sores, opened the dead bodies, and, searching the sores, found an huge carbuncle growing inward. Such whose bodies were spotted with black pimples, the bigness of a lentile, lived not a day. Many died vomiting blood. Some that were given over by the most eminent physicians unexpectedly recovered; others, of whose recovery they thought themselves perfectly secure, suddenly perished. No cause of this sickness could be reached by man’s reason. Some received benefit by bathing, others it hurt. Many died for want of relief, others escaped without it. In a word, no way could there be found of preservation, either by preventing the sickness, or of mastering the disease, no cause appearing either of their falling sick or recovery. Women with child, who were visited, certainly died; some miscarrying, some fairly delivered, and perishing with their children. Three women only were safely brought to bed and recovered, their children dying; and one died whose child had the hap to live. Such as had their sores great, and running plentifully, escaped; the violence of the carbuncles being thereby assuaged; and this was the most certain sign of health. Such whose sores staid as they first arose, underwent the miserable accident formerly mentioned. Some had their thighs withered, when the sores rose upon them and did not run. Some escaped with diminished tongues, and lived stammering, or uttering sounds without distinction, all their days. In Constantinople the pestilence lasted four months; raging three months with all extremity. In the beginning few died more than usual. Then, growing hotter and hotter, it came to five, and at last to ten thousand every day. At first they buried their dead carefully; but at length all came to confusion, and many lay long unburied; servants were without masters; rich men had none to attend them. In the afflicted city little was to be seen but empty houses, no trade going, or shops open.
No III.
Account of the Plague at London in 1665:—From Dr. Hodges and others.
IN the beginning of September 1664 the people of London first became alarmed by a report of the plague being broke out in Holland, where it raged violently the former year. The United Provinces had received it from some place in the Levant, and, certain accounts having been received of the distemper being in Holland, several councils were held by government with a view of concerting means for preventing its introduction into Britain. These were held privately, and it does not appear that any thing was positively determined upon; but thus the knowledge that such a distemper existed in Holland was suppressed, and the public fears dissipated until the beginning of December; when two, supposed to be Frenchmen,[214] in Long-acre, or rather the upper end of Drury lane, died with such suspicious symptoms that the people of the house endeavoured to conceal the distemper of which they died. The secretaries of state, however, having got intelligence of the matter, caused their bodies to be inspected, when it became evident they had died of the plague. This produced a general alarm; Dr. Hodges says, that “hereupon some timorous neighbours, under apprehensions of a contagion, removed into the city of London; who unfortunately carried along with them the pestilential taint; whereby that disease, which was before in its infancy, in a family or two, suddenly got strength, and spread abroad its fatal poison; and, merely for want of confining the persons first seized with it, the whole city was irrecoverably infected.” The author of the Journal, however, says that the public fear again subsided, though it had been still farther raised by the death of another person in the same house about the latter end of December; but, as no more died for six weeks, no farther notice was taken of it until the 12th of February, when one died in another house, but in the same parish. Soon after this an increase was observed in the weekly list of burials at St. Giles’s parish, which augmented the general alarm so much that few cared to pass through Drury lane or the suspected streets, unless upon very urgent business. In a short time a like augmentation was perceived in the bills of the adjoining parishes, and indeed all over the town. The Journal informs us that the usual number of burials within the bill of mortality was from 240 to 300; but from the 20th of December to January 24th they had gradually arisen from 291 to 474. This seems inconsistent with what he had before said of the alarm having ceased till the 12th of February; but we shall take his own words. “This last bill (474) was really frightful; being a greater number than had been known to have been buried in one week since the preceding visitation of 1656. However, all this went off again, and the weather proving cold, and the frost, which began in December, continuing very severe, even till near the end of February, attended with sharp though moderate winds, the bills decreased again, and the city grew healthy, and every body began to look upon the danger as good as over; only that still the burials in St. Giles’s continued high. From the beginning of April especially, they stood at 25 each week, till the week from the 18th to the 25th, when there were buried in St. Giles’s parish 30; whereof were two of the plague, and eight of the spotted fever, which was looked upon as the same thing; likewise the number that died of the spotted fever on the whole increased; being eight the week before, and twelve the week above named.”
Thus a new and still greater alarm was produced, which was yet farther augmented by the spreading of the distemper. The journalist says indeed that only a few were set down in the lists as having died of the plague; the remainder of the deaths being charged to other distempers; and accordingly one week, when the mortality bill was high, and only 14 charged to the plague, he says, “this was all knavery and collusion; for in St. Giles’s parish they buried 40 in all; whereof it was certain that most of them died of the plague, though they were set down of other distempers; and though the number of all the burials was not increased above 32, and the whole bill being but 385, yet there were 14 of the spotted fever, as well as 14 of the plague; and we took it for granted upon the whole that there were 50 died of the plague that week. The next bill was from the 23d of May to the 30th, when the number of the plague was 17; but the burials in St. Giles’s were 53; a frightful number, of whom they set down but nine of the plague; but, on examination more strictly by the justices of the peace, and at the lord mayor’s request, it was found there were 20 more who were really dead of the plague in that parish, but had been set down of the spotted fever, or other distempers, besides others concealed.”
The account given by Dr. Hodges is somewhat different from the above. He informs us that “a very hard frost began in December and continued three months, which seemed greatly to diminish the contagion, and very few died during that season; though even then it was not totally extinguished.” The journalist says that in this intermission of the plague there was a difficulty which he could not well get over. The first person who died of the plague he says (p. 234) was on December 20th, or thereabouts, 1664, though he had told us before (p. 2) that it was the end of November, or beginning of December the same year. “But after this (continues he) we heard no more of any person dying of the plague, or the distemper being in that place, till the 9th of February, which was about seven weeks after; and then one more was buried out of the same house: then it was hushed, and we were perfectly easy as to the public for a great while, for there were no more entered in the weekly bill to be dead of the plague, till the 22d of April. Now the question seems to be thus: Where lay the seeds of the infection all this while? How came it to stop so long, and not to stop any longer? Either the distemper did not immediately come by contagion from body to body, or, if it did, then a body may continue to be infected without the disease discovering itself many days, nay, weeks together. It is true there was a very cold winter, and long frost, which continued three months; and this, the Doctors say, might check the infection; but then the learned must allow me to say that if, according to their notion, the disease was, as I may say, only frozen up, it would, like a frozen river, have returned to its usual force and current when it thawed; whereas the principal recess of the infection, which was from February to April, was after the frost was broken, and the weather mild and warm. But there is another way of solving all this difficulty, which I think my own remembrance of the thing will supply; and that is, the fact is not granted, namely, that there died none in those long intervals, viz. from the 20th of December to the 9th of February, and from thence to the 22d of April. The weekly bills are the only evidence on the other side, and those bills were not of credit enough, at least with me, to support an hypothesis, or determine a question of such importance as this: for it was our received opinion at that time, and I believe upon very good grounds, that the fraud lay in the parish officers, searchers and persons appointed to give account of the dead, and what diseases they died of; and, as people were very loth at first to have the neighbours believe their houses were infected, so they gave money to procure, or otherwise procured, the dead persons to be returned as dying of other distempers; and this, I know, was practised afterwards in many places; I believe I might say in all places where the distemper came; as might be seen by the vast increase of the numbers placed in the weekly bills under other articles of diseases, during the time of the infection. For example, in the months of July and August, when the plague was coming on to its highest pitch, it was very ordinary to have from 1000 to 1200, nay to almost 1500, a week, of other distempers: not that the numbers of those distempers were really increased to such a degree; but the great number of families and houses where really the infection was, obtained the favour to have their dead returned of other distempers, to prevent the shutting up of their houses.”
The disease continued to advance, but with such intervals and remissions as frequently gave hopes of its disappearing entirely. Nevertheless, about the beginning of May the inhabitants began to leave the city in great numbers. The journalist, for his own part, was irresolute; and sometimes would have left the city with the rest, had it not been for the impossibility of finding an horse; “for, (says he) though it is true that all the people did not go out of the city of London, yet I may venture to say that in a manner all the horses did; for there was hardly a horse to be bought or hired in the whole city for some weeks.” Many fled on foot, carrying with them soldiers’ tents, in which they slept in the fields, it being then warm weather, and no danger of taking cold. This way of living was also familiar in some degree by reason of the wars which had preceded; multitudes of those who had served in them being at that time in London. This our author greatly approves of as a method of preventing the infection from spreading, and thinks that had it been more generally practised, much less damage would have been done in the country than happened at the time from this dreadful distemper.