Page:A practical method as used for the cure of the plague in London in 1665.pdf/33

 all their former Care in Attendance; altho', at the same Time, these Spots were not the direct Signs of Mortality.

This pernicious Practice, as it was owing to an Error in Judgment among the Common People, so it concerns us to remove this Mistake, by making it appear, that all these Pestilential Eruptions are not endued with equal Conditions of Potency; nor are they all alike such sure Pledges of Death, as the Vulgar would make them to be.

In order then to know the true Tokens, and the Degrees of Malignity in their Venom; our Author advises, to have a Regard to their different Colour and Hardness; and says, that in the late Sickness, such whose Spots being prick'd, had a quick Sensibility, and that went no deeper than the Skin, he very seldom fail'd the Curing. But those whose Tokens had a round Circle, dark blue and green, like the Colours in the Rainbow, with a Crimson Mark in the Middle thereof, and a Hardness that distinguish'd it self from the other Flesh; such Spots, he owns, he could never subdue, by any Remedies whatsoever; and thinks them rightly call'd Tokens, as they were in that Plague the infallible Token of sudden Death.

The General Remedies being then thus provided, the External Helps are next to Rh