IT is altogether foreign to my Design here, to enumerate all the Appearances that belong to a pestilential Constitution, because a great deal may be ascribed to Phantasie and Conjecture, as the Influence of Comets, and the Conjunctions of Planets, with others of like Nature: For what strange Notions have been broached concerning
this Contagion, which was imported to us from Abroad? Are the Tails of Comets always armed with pestilential Arrows? Or is the Air the more impure and unhealthful? Had we any Famine before the last Sickness? Or had we portentious Swarms of Insects like Clouds over us? No, just the contrary, as we before observed; all Things from Nature were promising and serene, and this Destroyer invaded us on a sudden from strange Countries; it is therefore of more Advantage to our Design here, to take all its concomitant Signs from its manifest Effects.
AND indeed there are not many peculiar to a pestilential Fever, as that is chiefly a Collection, or an Epitome of all other Fevers together, which in such a Confederacy are not therefore without a tedious Work to be enumerated in all their Affections; I shall therefore satisfie my self with describing such only which are most obvious to common Observation, and are met with in most infected Persons: And these for Method Sake I shall distribute into two Classes.
FIRST, The manifest Signs of Infection.
SECONDLY, The Appearances after Infection.
BUT hereunto I think it necessary to premise, that a Pestilence puts on sometimes one, and at others another Appearance, and sometimes even contrary ones, according to the Constitution or Age of the Patient, the Season of the Year, present or preceding Distempers, a faulty Way of Living, and the different Means of Communication, both with Respect to Virulence and Degree.
THE Symptoms of the first Class are Horror, Vomiting, Delirium, Dizziness, Head-ach, and Stupefaction.
OF the second, a Fever, Watching, Palpitation of the Heart, Bleeding at Nose, and a great Heat about the Precordia.
THE Signs more peculiar to a Pestilence, are those Pustules which the common People call Blains, Buboes, Carbuncles,
Spots, and those Marks called Tokens; of all which distinctly.