It is true there was, as I observed at first, and is well known to many yet living, a very cold winter and a long frost, which continued three months; and this, the doctors say, might check the infection.  But then the learned must allow me to say, that if, according to their notion, the disease was, as I may say, only frozen up, it would, like a frozen river, have returned to its usual force and current when it thawed; whereas the principal recess of this infection, which was from February to April, was after the frost was broken and the weather mild and warm.

But there is another way of solving all this difficulty, which I think my own remembrance of the thing will supply; and that is, the fact is not granted, namely, that there died none in those long intervals, viz., from the 20th of December to the 9th of February, and from thence to the 22d of April.  The weekly bills are the only evidence on the other side, and those bills were not of credit enough, at least with me, to support an hypothesis, or determine a question of such importance as this; for it was our received opinion at that time, and I believe upon very good grounds, that the fraud lay in the parish officers, searchers, and persons appointed to give account of the dead, and what diseases they died of; and as people were very loath at first to have the neighbors believe their houses were infected, so they gave money to procure, or otherwise procured, the dead persons to be returned as dying of other distempers; and this I know was practiced afterwards in many places, I believe I might say in all places where the distemper came, as will be seen by the vast increase of the numbers placed in the weekly bills under other articles[278] of diseases during the time of the infection.  For example, in the months of July and August, when the plague was coming on to its highest pitch, it was very ordinary to have from a thousand to twelve hundred, nay, to almost fifteen hundred, a week, of other distempers.  Not that the numbers of those distempers were really increased to such a degree; but the great number of families and houses where really the infection was, obtained the favor to have their dead be returned of other distempers, to prevent the shutting up their houses.  For example:—­

    Dead of other Diseases besides the Plague.

From the 18th to the 25th of July     942
To the 1st of August                1,004
To the 8th                          1,213
To the 15th                         1,439
To the 22d                          1,331
To the 29th                         1,394
To the 5th of September             1,264
To the 12th                         1,056
To the 19th                         1,132
To the 26th                           927

Now, it was not doubted but the greatest part of these, or a great part of them, were dead of the plague; but the officers were prevailed with to return them as above, and the numbers of some particular articles of distempers discovered is as follows:—­