Page:A Journal of the Plague Year (1722).djvu/288

 However, in general, prudent cautious People did enter into ſome Meaſures for airing and ſweetning their Houfes, and burnt Perfumes, Incenſe, Benjamin, Rozin, and Sulphur in the Rooms cloſe ſhut up, and then let the Air carry it all out with a Blaſt of Gun-powder; others cauſed large Fires to be made all Day and all Night, for ſeveral Days and Nights; by the ſame Token, that two or three were pleas’d to ſet their Houſes on Fire, and ſo effectually ſweetned them by burning them down to the Ground; as particularly one at Ratcliff, one in Holbourn, and one at Weſtminſter; beſides two or three that were ſet on Fire, but the Fire was happily got out again, before it went far enough to burn down the Houſes; and one Citizen’s Servant, I think it was in Thames Street, carryed ſo much Gunpowder into his Maſter’s Houſe for clearing it of the Infection, and managed it ſo fooliſhly, that he blew up part of the Roof of the Houſe. But the Time was not fully come, that the City was to be purg’d by Fire, nor was it far off; for within Nine Months more I ſaw it all lying in Aſhes; when, as ſome of our Quacking Philoſophers pretend, the Seeds of the Plague were entirely deſtroy’d and not before; a Notion too ridiculous to ſpeak of here, ſince, had the Seeds of the Plague remain’d in the Houſes, not to be deſtroyed but by Fire, how has it been, that they have not ſince broken out? Seeing all thoſe Buildings in the Suburbs and Liberties, and in the great Pariſhes of Stepney, White-Chapel, Aldgate, Biſhopſgate, Shoreditch, Cripplegate and St. Giles’s, where the Fire never came, and where the Plague rag’d with the great-it Violence, remain ſtill in the ſame Condition they were in before.

But to leave theſe things juſt as I found them, it was certain, that thoſe People, who were more than