Page:Lives of British Physicians.djvu/112

 94 BRITISH PHYSICIANS. " In the first house that was mfected, there died four persons ; a neighbour hearing that the mis- tress of the house was ill, visited her, and carried home the distemper to her family, and died, with all her household. A minister, called to pray with the first sick person in the second house, was said to sicken and die immediately, with several more in his family. A Frenchman, who hved near the infected houses, removed, for fear of the dis- temper, into Bearbinder-lane, and died, to the great affliction of the city. Then the physicians began to dehberate, for they did not at first imagine it to be a general contagion ; but the Secretaries of State got notice of it, and ordered two physi- cians and a surgeon to inspect the bodies, who assured the people, that it was neither more nor less than the plague, with all its terrifying parti- culars ; and that it threatened an universal infec- tion, so many people having already conversed with the sick or distempered, and having, as might be supposed, received infection from them, that it might be impossible to put a stop to it. This filled people's heads so, that few cared to go through Drury-lane. "As soon as the magistracy, to whom the public care belonged, saw how the contagion daily in- creased, and had now extended itself to several parishes, an order was immediately issued out, to shut up all the infected houses, that neither rela- tions nor acquaintance might unwarily receive it from them ; and to keep the infected from carrying it about with them. " Terror and apprehension now led the multitude into a thousand weak and absurd things, which