It may be proper to ask here how long it may be supposed men might have the seeds of the contagion in them before it discovered[265] itself in this fatal manner, and how long they might go about seemingly whole, and yet be contagious to all those that came near them.  I believe the most experienced physicians cannot answer this question directly any more than I can; and something an ordinary observer may take notice of which may pass their observation.  The opinion of physicians abroad seems to be, that it may lie dormant in the spirits, or in the blood vessels, a very considerable time:  why else do they exact a quarantine of those who come into their harbors and ports from suspected places?  Forty days is, one would think, too long for nature to struggle with such an enemy as this, and not conquer it or yield to it; but I could not think by my own observation that they can be infected, so as to be contagious to others, above fifteen or sixteen days at farthest; and on that score it was, that when a house was shut up in the city, and any one had died of the plague, but nobody appeared to be ill in the family for sixteen or eighteen days after, they were not so strict but that they[266] would connive at their going privately abroad; nor would people be much afraid of them afterwards, but rather think they were fortified the better, having not been vulnerable when the enemy was in their house:  but we sometimes found it had lain much longer concealed.

Upon the foot of all these observations I must say, that, though Providence seemed to direct my conduct to be otherwise, it is my opinion, and I must leave it as a prescription, viz., that the best physic against the plague is to run away from it.  I know people encourage themselves by saying, “God is able to keep us in the midst of danger, and able to overtake us when we think ourselves out of danger;” and this kept thousands in the town whose carcasses went into the great pits by cartloads, and who, if they had fled from the danger, had, I believe, been safe from the disaster:  at least, ’tis probable they had been safe.

And were this very fundamental[267] only duly considered by the people on any future occasion of this or the like nature, I am persuaded it would put them upon quite different measures for managing the people from those that they took in 1665, or than any that have been taken abroad that I have heard of:  in a word, they would consider of separating the people into smaller bodies, and removing them in time farther from one another, and not let such a contagion as this, which is indeed chiefly dangerous to collected bodies of people, find a million of people in a body together, as was very near the case before, and would certainly be the case if it should ever appear again.

The plague, like a great fire, if a few houses only are contiguous where it happens, can only[268] burn a few houses; or if it begins in a single, or, as we call it, a lone house, can only burn that lone house where it begins; but if it begins in a close-built town or city, and gets ahead, there its fury increases, it rages over the whole place, and consumes all it can reach.