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 SYDENHAM. 93 wlio attended the funerals of their friends one evening, were the next carried to their own long home ; and yet the worst was not certain, for the disease, as yet, had no relaxation." — Such is the relation of an eye-witness*, who was one of the 'physicians appointed by government to visit the sick. The first appearance of this dreadful pesti- lence is thus described. — " Towards the close of the year 1664, two or three persons died suddenly, attended with symptoms that plainly manifested the nature of the disease : hereupon some timid neigh- bours moved into the city, and unfortunately carried the contagion with them ; and, for want of iconfining the persons who were first seized, the ifected. As soon as it was rumoured that the iplague was in the city, it was impossible to relate what accounts were spread of its fatality ; every one predicted its future devastations, and terrified each other with remembrance of a former pesti- lence. It seems quite ascertained, that it was imported into London by goods from Holland, j brought thither from the Levant, and first broke put in a house in Long-acre, near the end of first opened ; two Frenchmen dying, the family endeavoured to conceal it, but it spread from that house to others, by the unwary communication with those who were sick ; and infected the parish- ofiScers who were employed about the dead : it 'went on, and proceeded from person to person,, jfrom house to house. I * Hodges— Loimologia,
 * wliole city was, in a little time, irrecoverably in-
 * Drury-lane, where those goods were carried, and