leave the sick person, as I have said above, they had all been
preserved; whereas when, upon one or more sickening in a family, the
house has been shut up, the whole family have perished, and the bearers
been obliged to go in to fetch out the dead bodies, not being able to
bring them to the door, and at last none left to do it.

(3) This put it out of question to me, that the calamity was spread by
infection; that is to say, by some certain steams or fumes, which the
physicians call effluvia, by the breath, or by the sweat, or by the
stench of the sores of the sick persons, or some other way, perhaps,
beyond even the reach of the physicians themselves, which effluvia
affected the sound who came within certain distances of the sick,
immediately penetrating the vital parts of the said sound persons,
putting their blood into an immediate ferment, and agitating their
spirits to that degree which it was found they were agitated; and so
those newly infected persons communicated it in the same manner to
others. And this I shall give some instances of, that cannot but
convince those who seriously consider it; and I cannot but with some
wonder find some people, now the contagion is over, talk of its being
an immediate stroke from Heaven, without the agency of means, having
commission to strike this and that particular person, and none
other--which I look upon with contempt as the effect of manifest
ignorance and enthusiasm; likewise the opinion of others, who talk of
infection being carried on by the air only, by carrying with it vast
numbers of insects and invisible creatures, who enter into the body with
the breath, or even at the pores with the air, and there generate
or emit most acute poisons, or poisonous ovae or eggs, which mingle
themselves with the blood, and so infect the body: a discourse full of
learned simplicity, and manifested to be so by universal experience; but
I shall say more to this case in its order.

I must here take further notice that nothing was more fatal to the
inhabitants of this city than the supine negligence of the people
themselves, who, during the long notice or warning they had of the
visitation, made no provision for it by laying in store of provisions,
or of other necessaries, by which they might have lived retired and
within their own houses, as I have observed others did, and who were
in a great measure preserved by that caution; nor were they, after they
were a little hardened to it, so