Page:A Journal of the Plague Year (1722).djvu/238

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230
Memoirs of

willful Murtherers, if they would have gone Abroad among healthy People, and it would have verified indeed the Suggeſtion which I mention'd above, and which I thought ſeem’d untrue, (viz.) that the infected People were utterly careleſs as to giving the Infection to others, and rather forward to do it than not; and I believe it was partly from this very Thing that they raiſed that Suggeſtion, which I hope was not really true in Fact.

I confeſs no particular Caſe is ſufficient to prove a general, but I cou’d name ſeveral People within the Knowledge of ſome of their Neighbours and Families yet living, who ſhew’d the contrary to an extream. One Man, a Maſter of a Family in my Neighbourhood, having had the Diſtemper, he thought he had it given him by a poor Workman whom he employ’d, and whom he went to his Houſe to ſee, or went for ſome Work that he wanted to have finiſhed, and he had ſome Apprehenſions even while he was at the poor Workman’s Door, but did not diſcover it fully, but the next Day it diſcovered it ſelf, and he was taken very ill; upon which he immediately cauſed himſelf to be carried into an out Building which he had in his Yard, and where there was a Chamber over a Work-houſe, the Man being a Brazier; here he lay, and here he died, and would be tended by none of his Neighbours, but by a Nurſe from Abroad, and would not ſuffer his Wife, or Children, or Servants, to come up into the Room left they ſhould be infected, but ſent them his Bleſſing and Prayers for them by the Nurſe, who {poke it to them at a Diſtance, and all this for fear of giving them the Diſtemper, and without which, he knew as they were kept up, they could not have.”

And here I muſt obſerve alſo, that the Plague, as I ſuppoſe all Diſtempers do, operated in a different