The acute, penetrating nature of the disease itself was such, and the infection was received so imperceptibly, that the most exact caution could not secure us while in the place; but I must be allowed to believe—­and I have so many examples fresh in my memory to convince me of it, that I think none can resist their evidence,—­I say, I must be allowed to believe that no one in this whole nation ever received the sickness or infection, but who received it in the ordinary way of infection from somebody, or the clothes, or touch, or stench of somebody, that was infected before.

The manner of its first coming to London proves this also, viz., by goods brought over from Holland, and brought thither from the Levant; the first breaking of it out in a house in Longacre where those goods were carried and first opened; its spreading from that house to other houses by the visible unwary conversing with those who were sick, and the infecting the parish officers who were employed about persons dead; and the like.  These are known authorities for this great foundation point, that it went on and proceeded from person to person, and from house to house, and no otherwise.  In the first house that was infected, there died four persons.  A neighbor, hearing the mistress of the first house was sick, went to visit her, and went home and gave the distemper to her family, and died, and all her household.  A minister called to pray with the first sick person in the second house was said to sicken immediately, and die, with several more in his house.  Then the physicians began to consider, for they did not at first dream of a general contagion; but the physicians being sent to inspect the bodies, they assured the people that it was neither more or less than the plague, with all its terrifying particulars, and that it threatened an universal infection; so many people having already conversed with the sick or distempered, and having, as might be supposed, received infection from them, that it would be impossible to put a stop to it.

Here the opinion of the physicians agreed with my observation afterwards, namely, that the danger was spreading insensibly:  for the sick could infect none but those that came within reach of the sick person; but that one man, who may have really received the infection, and knows it not, but goes abroad and about as a sound person, may give the plague to a thousand people, and they to greater numbers in proportion, and neither the person giving the infection, nor the persons receiving it, know anything of it, and perhaps not feel the effects of it for several days after.  For example:—­