Here one man was to be seen covered over with bloody boils from head to foot; there another led along by two of his comrades in a deep lethargy, who, in spite of pinching and pricking, dosed into eternity; a third, swelled by the dropsy, and imploring the surgeon in vain to tap off the water (who generally answered that it was too late) was left to expire by suffocation. In the hospital some were observed clasping their hands, and praying aloud to God to be relieved; while others lay at their side in a frenzy fever, tearing their hair, blaspheming Providence, and cursing the day that they were born.—In short, all was dreadful beyond description, by the pen of a Milton excepted.
————“Sad noisome dark,
A lazar-house it seem’d, wherein were laid
Numbers of all, diseas’d: all maladies
Of ghastly spasm or racking torture; qualms
Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds, [[340]]
Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs;
Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy,
And moon-struck madness; pining atrophy,
Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums: