THOSE dreadful stories you have heard of the plague, have very little foundation in truth.  I own, I have much ado to reconcile myself to the sound of a word, which has always given me such terrible ideas; though I am convinced there is little more in it, than in a fever.  As a proof of this, let me tell you that we passed through two or three towns most violently infected.  In the very next house where we lay, (in one of those places) two persons died of it.  Luckily for me I was so well deceived, that I knew nothing of the matter; and I was made believe, that our second cook had only a great cold.  However, we left our doctor to take care of him, and yesterday they both arrived here in good health; and I am now let into the secret, that he has had the plague.  There are many that escape it, neither is the air ever infected.  I am persuaded, that it would be as easy a matter to root it out here, as out of Italy and France; but it does so little mischief, they are not very solicitous about it, and are content to suffer this distemper, instead of our variety, which they are utterly unacquainted with.

A propos of distempers, I am going to tell you a thing that will make you wish yourself here.  The small-pox, so fatal, and so general amongst us, is here entirely harmless, by the invention of ingrafting, which is the term they give it.  There is a set of old women, who make it their business to perform the operation, every autumn, in the month of September, when the great heat is abated.  People send to one another to know if any of their family has a mind to have the small-pox:  they make parties for this purpose, and when they are met (commonly fifteen or sixteen together) the old woman comes with a nutshell full of the matter of the best sort of small-pox, and asks what vein you please to have opened.  She immediately rips open that you offer to her, with a large needle, (which gives you no more pain than a common scratch) and puts into the vein as much matter as can ly upon the head of her needle, and after that, binds up the little wound with a hollow bit of shell; and in this manner opens four or five veins.  The Grecians have commonly the superstition of opening one in the middle of the forehead, one in each arm, and one on the breast, to mark the sign of the cross; but this has a very ill effect, all these wounds leaving little scars, and is not done by those that are not superstitious, who chuse to have them in the legs, or that part of the arm that is concealed.  The children or young patients play together all the rest of the day, and are in perfect health to the eighth.  Then the fever begins to seize them, and they keep their beds two days, very seldom three.  They have very rarely above twenty or thirty in their faces, which never mark; and in eight days time they are as well as before their illness.  Where they are wounded, there remain running sores during the distemper, which I don’t doubt is a great relief