During this period the pestilence lurked in the Grison mountains: it had even appeared in the capital; but the deaths were few, the disease spread not, and both magistrates and people, with a common infatuation, were eager to deny the existence of danger until it was too late to guard against it. In the autumn of 1629 a further evil visited this unhappy country. The Spanish governor had granted a free passage to a German army, intended to oppose the French interest in the duchy of Mantua. These men, with the brutal licentiousness which preeminently disgraced the mercenary soldiers of that age, inflicted all the miseries of war upon a friendly population. Blood, rapine, and fire marked their path; the inhabitants concealed their property, and abandoned their houses, but it was often in vain; their persecutors spread over the country, and if discovered they were compelled by torture to reveal their stores. And as the first of these locusts left nothing for those who followed, the latter often vented their wrath and disappointment upon those poor people, whose only crime was having lost their all. Thus all who could fly, took shelter in the most retired fortresses, and there endured extreme hardship, until the last of these ill-omened allies had disappeared. And such was the devastation, that the miseries of their temporary shelter were little worse than those endured after their return home.[121]

Still further to increase the terrors of these troops, it was reported that they bore the plague along with them, from which indeed the German armies were said seldom to be entirely free. Superstition added to the general alarm. A comet appeared in 1628; another in 1630. Belief in the malign influence of these bodies was then general. Prophecies were current, said to be of ancient date, denouncing plague and famine in these years. It will be evident to the reader that no place could be better fitted to receive and nourish a pestilential disorder than Milan was at this time. Scarcity of food and want of cleanliness, inseparable from a poor and crowded population, and a summer of unusual heat, combined to favour the reception of the enemy. In November, 1629, a soldier quartered at Chiavenna returned to his home at Milan. He was taken ill, removed to the hospital, and died; and on examination the signs of plague were found on his body, and the subsequent death of all persons who had been under the same roof made it evident that the plague had gained entrance. But at first the progress of the disease was slow, so slow that doubts were entertained whether it were really the plague; and while the magistrates were dilatory and remiss in taking the usual precautions, the common people were especially unwilling to admit so unpalatable and alarming a report. Fear of the sufferings, and disgust at the restrictions and discipline of an infected city, made them furious against all who warned them of their danger. The first physician in Milan, a man eminent for charity in the exercise of his profession as well as skill, and therefore highly venerated even by the populace, was assaulted by a mob, and obliged to fly for his life, upon no other provocation than his belief in the reality of the disease.

ill202

But unfortunately incredulity was of no avail to check its progress; and at last the magistrates were compelled to place guards and barriers at the gates, and to exclude all persons and all articles coming from suspected places. Not only the sick, but all persons living in the same house with them, were removed to the lazaretto, or, if suffered to remain, were placed under the charge of an officer appointed to ensure their perfect seclusion. Those whose health was suspected were allowed to remain under similar but somewhat lighter restraint. And having done what was possible in the way of precaution with little benefit, for the mortality increased fearfully, the authorities turned for help to St. Charles Borromeo, the late Archbishop of Milan, whose body, enclosed in a crystal shrine, formed the most precious treasure of the cathedral. There was at least a propriety in applying to him in preference to any other saint in the calendar; for his liberality, and intrepidity, and zeal in his pastoral duties were eminently displayed in 1576, when Milan laboured under the same calamity.

It was determined therefore, with the permission of the church, to carry these relics in solemn procession round the city, and to implore the continued patronage and intercession of the saint, who in life had zealously watched over the temporal as well as the spiritual welfare of his people. It was ordered that no expense be spared to increase the splendour of the rite, and testify due reverence to the hallowed remains; and accordingly the streets through which the pomp was to pass were cleared, and cleansed, and decked with tapestry and other ornaments, as if for a festival. The houses of the poor, and those which the pestilence had left untenanted, were furnished at the expense of the city, or by the piety of some wealthy neighbour. The latter should rather have been left in their desolation, bare and mournful, to testify to the extent of the distress, and implore, more touchingly than words could do it, the divine protection. The shrine was borne through the chief streets surrounded by the priesthood, the nobles, and the magistrates, barefoot, and in penitential dresses, and followed by a multitude: and for a moment all minds were abstracted from their own and the common danger, to gaze upon the mitred skull, visible through its transparent covering, whose eyeless sockets and grinning jaws might have seemed to mock the hopes so fondly and vainly entertained.

The procession took place on June 3rd: at its close the saint returned to his resting-place; and from that time forward the disease raged with redoubled fury, and the Milanese were reduced to despair. For eight days and nights, however, the shrine was deposited upon the high altar, surrounded by a concourse of votaries, beseeching help with tears and cries. The answer, our author says, was comprised in the number of the dying; and lest the interpretation should be doubtful, that number increased until 1800 perished daily. Strange infatuation! where every man should have avoided his dearest friend as charged with death, to congregate thousands in supplication against an enemy, to whom in that very act they gave a more extensive and deadly power!

The speedy burial of the dead is commonly one of the great difficulties in time of pestilence. Here it was little felt. There was a class of men called Monatti, professed attendants on the plague, and ever ready for, and rejoicing in the most dangerous and disgusting services. Ripamonte speaks of them as a class well known to everybody, and passes in silence over the origin of the name, and the nature of the reward which tempted, or the tie, whether hereditary or other, which bound them to so desperate a service: curious points on which we have failed to procure information elsewhere. It was the duty of these men to convey the sick to the hospitals, and attend them there; to watch over those who remained at home, and to carry away the dead for interment. Strange and revolting were these funeral processions. They were preceded by two men with bells, who warned all persons to avoid the way, that the Monatti were at hand, death and pestilence in their train. Then came carts with the dead piled in disorder, many stripped even of their last covering, when it was such as to excite the cupidity of the ruffians in charge of them; while the long hair of women trailing on the ground, and limbs and heads dangling over the sides, and answering to the rough movements of the vehicle, and fallen bodies strewed along the ground,[122] presented a spectacle the more revolting for the grotesqueness that mingled with its horror. Meanwhile the Monatti sat carousing in the midst of death with indecent laughter and jests, and exultation in the general calamity; indulging the avowed hope that the mortality might never cease till the population of Milan was exterminated, and the wealth of her palaces left unowned and undefended, to be appropriated by the plunderer at will. Necessary as these ministers were, their presence added fresh miseries to those under which the city groaned. Reckless and desperate, hating others in proportion as they were loathed and despised, they were prepared for any crime that passion and interest might prompt. Their duty called them into all suspected houses, and at such a season every house lay open to suspicion. Every abode, every room therefore was exposed to their intrusion; and robbery was the most frequent, but not the worst end to which these ill-omened visits were perverted. Other profligates too assumed their dress and ensigns, and sometimes when the true and false Monatti met, strife and bloodshed added new horrors to the sick chamber or the dying bed.

The general distress, as misery is ever prone to credulity, was in no small degree increased by the most absurd and wicked reports. It was supposed that foreign princes had generated, or, at all events, were maintaining the plague, with the view of weakening the power of the state, and taking undisturbed possession of it, when reduced to a solitude. A belief was propagated, that persons were employed to besmear everything likely to be touched with the most foul and pestilential compounds. The walls of houses, the fastenings of doors, household implements, clothes, men’s persons, everything fit to spread the infection, nay, the very standing corn in the fields, now ripe for the sickle, were thought to be poisoned by some unseen enemy. The belief originated in an unexplained appearance, the result most likely of some wanton joke or malicious deception. On the morning of April 23rd, the fronts of houses throughout the whole length of the city were observed by the earliest passengers to be marked with spots, appearing as if a sponge filled with the matter of the plague-sores had been pressed against them. The whole population ere long was in a commotion, and poured out to see this strange phenomenon; but this was before the fury of the pestilence, and the alarm created was forgotten, until revived by the increasing mortality. Then reports were circulated, and greedily received, that emissaries of hostile princes were diligently engaged in spreading infectious poison through the city; nay, that the powers of hell, as well as human principalities, were leagued against it, and that the devil had taken a house in Milan, where his head-quarters were established, and the pestiferous unguents prepared and distributed. One man related how, as he stood in front of the cathedral, he saw a chariot drawn by six white horses, and followed by a numerous attendance, in which a person sat, of princely demeanour, though his dark and deep-burnt complexion, his floating hair, the fire of his eye, and the threatening expression of his lip, gave such an air to the countenance as he had never beheld on mortal face. The stranger stopped before him, and bade him mount. He complied, and was carried to a house which appeared like many others; but on entering, he saw strange and wonderful things, in which majesty was mixed with horrors, delight with fear. In one part thick-flashing lightning dispelled the seeming night which reigned elsewhere: here a spectral senate held its meetings; there vast empty chambers and gardens extended, and from the brow of a dimly-seen rock waters poured abundantly into a basin placed to receive them; and he narrated a variety of other prodigies. The tempter concluded by showing him vast treasures, and promising that they should be his own, and every wish be gratified, if he would bow the knee to him and do his bidding. But the temptation was insufficient to overcome his virtue, and he was suddenly transported back to the spot whence he had been taken. The motive for concocting such tales is as evident as their extravagance: yet they roused the populace to such fury and such jealous suspicion, that many fell victims not to any imprudence, but to the commonest and most natural actions, which the prevailing frenzy interpreted into the dreadful crime of anointing. In sight of Ripamonte, from whom we derive this account, an old man past eighty, well known as a daily frequenter of the church of St. Antony, was seen, on rising from his knees, to wipe the bench on which he meant to sit with the skirt of his cloak. Some women raised a cry, that the old man was anointing the seats. The church was more thronged than usual, for it was a festival-day. The people ran together in an instant: the old man was dragged by the hair, beaten, and kicked; the only thing that saved his life for an instant was the wish to carry him before the judges, and extort some knowledge of his accomplices. “I saw him,” says Ripamonte, “dragged away thus, and never heard more of him. I think that he must have died on the instant. Those who were induced by pity to inquire of his character, reported that he was a good and honest man.”

With the people in this temper, accusations and convictions for a crime probably fictitious were not wanting. The first victim was a person employed by the tribunal of health to make the daily round of a district, and report the names of all who were ill. He was accused by some women, who described his person, and swore that they saw him from their windows daub the walls with some preparation. Being put to the torture, he endured it with wonderful constancy until the fourth day, and then when the judges, wearied by his firmness, were about to release him, he made a sort of voluntary confession, and named one Mora, a barber, as the person who had given him the ointments. Other circumstances he added, grossly false, as that the barber had given him at the same time a potion which took away all power of confession, until he had undergone a certain process of torture. The house of Mora was found full of medical or chemical vessels and preparations (it was then usual for barbers to practise surgery), which he declared were meant as preservatives to be distributed among his friends. The physicians who inspected them were of a different opinion, and declared them to be prepared for poisons; and on their report the barber was put to the torture, where, after several times alternately confessing and recanting, he at length made full acknowledgment of his guilt, and of all the methods which he had employed. Others, meanwhile, were apprehended upon the same charge, and made similar confessions under the cogent arguments of the rack; and all were put to death with circumstances of no common cruelty. Mora’s house was demolished, and a column built on the spot where it stood, with an inscription to commemorate his guilt. A sort of madness seems to have been epidemic, and it is not improbable that some persons may have been led to attempt the crime by the mere force of imagination, as sometimes a murder of unusual horror seems to work upon minds morbidly susceptible of such impressions, till they believe themselves irresistibly driven to commit the same offence. Some persons who were taken within the lazaretto, with boxes and bottles, as if prepared to collect the putrid humour of the plague-boils, which was believed to be the chief ingredient of these diabolical preparations, confessed their guilt, persisted in their confession under the severest tortures, and yet under the gallows asserted, that though they died willingly in expiation of other guilt, they were innocent in this point, even of the knowledge of unguents, or of the magical or diabolical practices which were said to be joined with them. One man who lay sick in the lazaretto, confessed that he had entered into a compact with the devil, and pointed out the spot where his poisons would be found. He died in raving madness (no uncommon symptom in the disease), calling for the means of self-destruction, and attempted to cut his throat with a sharp piece of money. A woman also confessed, and named her daughter as an accomplice: and the instruments of infection were found in the possession of the latter. It added no small credit to these stories that four men were said to have been detected in the palace at Madrid, with medicaments prepared for communicating the plague, yet they escaped, and left no trace of their flight. This news came in a letter signed by the king’s own hand, addressed to the governor of the province, and warning him to be upon his guard. There is some justice in an observation made by our author, that it seemed fated through the whole of this business that things doubtful and things certain should be intermixed, and mutually involve each other in obscurity. The total disappearance of four men, detected in a crime of such moment, even in a royal palace, where of all places their apprehension would appear to be certain, bears such an air of mystification as throws discredit on the whole story: yet we cannot suppose the Spanish monarch a party to the practising of so mischievous a deceit upon his own suffering subjects; and scarcely any other person would dare, or could be interested, to get up a trick so dangerous, and apparently so unprofitable to the contrivers and actors in it. But the people, blinded by their fears, saw neither improbability nor inconsistency in these stories. Ripamonte, evidently himself a sceptic, professes that an author was not free to canvass this subject unreservedly, so obstinately was the belief fixed both in the higher and lower classes, who maintained this breath of rumour as devotedly as they clung to their homes and altars, and all that they held most sacred.

The Italians, owing perhaps to the common use of poisons among them, seem readily to have admitted such reports. When the plague broke out at Naples in 1656, it was said to have been introduced by the Spaniards, who suborned people to scatter poisoned dust in the streets. This was one of the methods which the Milanese anointers were reported to use. Tadini, one of the most eminent physicians then and there practising, who wrote an account of the plague,[123] says that he knew two young women, who on crossing themselves with holy water on coming out of church observed that a clammy powder remained on their clothes and persons, wherever the sacred sign had been made. Returning home they were seized with giddiness, and died within two days. This seems a strong case, yet it may be doubted whether they died of the plague or of imagination, for no marks of the disease appeared on their bodies. Their mother, and those who had waited on them, perished in the same unaccountable way.

Through the whole of this trying season Cardinal Frederick Borromeo, the Archbishop of Milan, distinguished himself by an unceasing zeal in the cause of religion and charity. The ample revenues of his dignity, at all times liberally dispersed among those who needed assistance, were now devoted to the support of the lazarettos; and his private resources were increased by the zeal of the rich, who placed large sums of money at his disposal, confident that in his hands they would be most beneficially and discreetly employed. One remarkable instance of generosity is recorded. Two countrymen requested and obtained admission to the cardinal. “We are two brothers,” they said, “husbandmen, whom our father left in possession of a small farm: we have brought here 2000 gold pieces, which hard labour and economy have enabled us to accumulate, and now lay them at your feet, to be disposed to such charitable uses as shall appear best to you.” No less prodigal of his personal safety than of his wealth, this excellent prelate declared that he would never quit the city so long as the plague lasted; and he kept his word, notwithstanding the earnest and importunate solicitations of many who set a higher value on his life than he himself did. He visited the hospitals, the poor, gave free access to every person, however humble, who wished to see him, and directed his especial attention to requiring from the parochial clergy a strict discharge of their duties in this trying season, when the ministration of spiritual assistance to the sick and dying was esteemed more hazardous than mounting a breach or storming a battery. And it is just to observe that both the parochial and conventual clergy displayed a noble zeal in encountering danger and labour, not only up to, but beyond the strict letter of their duty. They regulated the lazarettos and preserved such order as could be maintained in such establishments, and attended to the bodily and mental wants of their patients, hopeless of preserving their own life through the dangers to which they were exposed, and therefore undeterred by danger when good was to be done. On the contrary, none of the physicians would enter the hospitals. The tribunal of health and the municipal authorities requested the college of that faculty to depute some members of their body to perform that duty: it was answered, that they would send members who should go as far as the walls, keeping however outside the ditch surrounding the establishment, and there do what they could to help the sick, but that no one would consent to enter those roofs to his certain destruction. They tried in vain to bribe men to this service, and were obliged to seek physicians in France and Germany.

Ripamonte possessed a breviary which had been the cardinal’s, which contained many manuscript observations made by him during the progress of the plague. They contain among several curious anecdotes the following observations on the reports prevalent concerning the anointers: “Truth and falsehood are readily intermixed, and with respect to this factitious plague many things are said of which you may readily believe a part, and as readily disprove others: and thus I admit some of those stories; others may, I think, be rejected. This I do not hesitate to affirm, that many have thought they could acquit themselves of negligence in exposing themselves to infection, by asserting that the plague which they have themselves caught, has been the work of anointers.”

The practices which, whether falsely or truly, were said to exist, are these. Men begged through the city, offering poisoned papers under the appearance of petitions. The earth and its productions, eatables, money given in charity, were poisoned. The fastenings of doors, as being necessarily handled, were special objects of attack; as were also the basins of holy water placed in churches. Poles were used to anoint what was out of reach, and bellows to scatter poisoned dust. “These and other things which were loudly proclaimed, I neither believe entirely,” says the cardinal, “nor yet think them reported entirely without foundation.” On the whole, without believing that these crimes were committed either at the instigation of foreign princes, or in virtue of an express compact with the devil, the cardinal seems decidedly to incline to the conclusion, that the pestilence was spread, if not originated, by artificial means; and to refer the guilt to soldiers (and the mercenaries of that day were men capable of any enormities), and other men of broken fortunes, who hoped to enrich themselves by plunder amid the general confusion, dismay, and death. Before we quit this subject, it is due to his reputation to state that he, and he alone, strongly disapproved of the procession with the body of St. Charles Borromeo, as furnishing the best opportunity to anointers, if such villains there were, and at all events of ensuring an increase of the disorder; since among such a multitude many persons were sure to bear about them the seeds of infection.

Towards the end of September the disease began to abate; and its decline was signalized by as impudent a fraud as has ever been practised, even in those earlier times when the power of the church and the blindness of the people were most remarkable. Attached to the Dominican convent there was a church of high reputation, dedicated to the Virgin, in gratitude for her signal kindness towards the city of Milan. On the night of September 22nd, the monks were collected, waiting for the matin service, when suddenly their several occupations of praying or sleeping were interrupted by the sound of the church bells. It soon appeared that they were rung miraculously, without touch of mortal fingers.[124] Some manifested wonder, others fear, according to their different tempers, but all were at a loss to explain the prodigy, until a voice too awful to be human was heard to say, “Mother, I will take pity upon my people.” The interpretation of the miracle then was evident: the Virgin had sought and obtained from her Son the remission of the plague, and the next morning the oil which fed the lamp suspended before her image was found to possess a miraculous healing virtue, and was distributed drop by drop to all classes, who crowded, high and low, to receive it; not, we may presume, without a handsome tribute of gratitude to the protectress herself, and to her servants the Dominicans. Ripamonte, cautious of expressing a doubt concerning the anointers, breathes not a syllable from which a want of faith in this miracle can even be inferred: the church was the church of the Inquisition, and it was from the Dominican monks that the officers of that institution were chosen. The number of deaths, however, began to diminish about or somewhat earlier than this time, and grew smaller and smaller as the autumn advanced; and by the close of the year Milan was delivered from this dreadful scourge.

The number who died in these few months was registered at 140,000, but this is supposed to have been below the mark, because many persons were privately buried by their friends, to avoid introducing the Monatti into their houses.

The extravagant credulity of the Milanese, and the fury and crimes which sprung from that credulity, may be partially excused on the ground that in that age even learned men believed in the possibility of exciting pestilence by means half-medical, half-magical, and that evil spirits exercised a malign influence over the air, and interfered visibly in diffusing the evil. More than thirty years later, the Jesuit Kircher, a man of various and extensive knowledge, but of a mystic temper, and a firm believer in the power of magic and occult influences, speaks of this plague as produced by the arts of evil men. Nor does he want authorities to strengthen his belief, among whom we may mention Theophrastus, who speaks of a terrible plague produced by poisoners in his own time, and gives the receipt for the pestiferous mixture, the ingredients of which are the putrid bodies of men deceased of the plague, and the bones, marrow, and poison of angry toads, approximating nearly to the receipt given by Ripamonte. To prove that demons may act as the ministers of God’s wrath to scatter the seeds of pestilence, he quotes Gregory of Nyssa, a father of the church in the fourth century, who relates in his Life of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus (the wonder-worker), that in a city of Greece, the people being collected in the theatre were much inconvenienced for want of room and made loud complaints, on which the evil spirit was to reply that there should soon be room enough in the city. And before the audience dispersed, so fierce a pestilence broke out among them, that in brief space a populous city was changed into a desert. Here the drift of the story is evident—it was a warning against theatrical amusements, which the Christians abhorred not only as profane, but as idolatrous, and a proof of the power of the devil over those who frequented them. The Pythagorean philosophers maintained similar doctrines as to the agency of spirits. Apollonius of Tyana, being at Ephesus during a pestilence, observed a demon under the habit of a fisherman busily employed in spreading the infection. He commanded that the fisherman should be stoned, and immediately the plague ceased. Similar stories are told of Pythagoras by Iamblichus. And the monkish writers helped mainly to encourage a belief of the interference of the devil in human affairs, by the many legends in which the spiritual adversary was introduced, to his own discomfiture and to the glory of some favourite saint.

It may reasonably be hoped, almost as much from the improved sanitary regulations and increased cleanliness of our cities, as from the progress of medical science, that no future pestilence will inflict upon Europe sufferings equal to those which have been described, and which are still to follow. To enable us, however, better to appreciate the value of this hope, we may refer shortly to the condition of that science about the period of which we have been speaking. The structure of the body, and the properties of minerals, were for the most part unknown even to the best Greek and Latin physicians; and though anatomy had made considerable progress at the beginning of the seventeenth century, pharmacy had made little or none. The regular physicians were educated in the schools of universities, where they imbibed that profound respect for the authority of the ancients which characterized the universities of that day, and that love of exclusive privilege which has been charged upon universities in general. Brought up in the fear of Hippocrates and Galen, they received their sayings as oracular, and would probably rather have let a patient die, secundum artem, than have employed remedies unsanctioned by their authority. Chemistry meanwhile had made some progress, and in seeking the philosopher’s stone many valuable properties of minerals had been discovered: but the discreditable character of the alchemists, and professional jealousy and prejudice, combined to render those persons, who from their knowledge and their reputation might best have availed themselves of the remedies thus presented, unwilling to profit, or to let others profit, by discoveries made in so irregular a manner. The effect of this ill-judged adherence to the wisdom of antiquity was not of course to stifle the powerful preparations employed by Paracelsus, Van Helmont, and others, but to throw them exclusively into the hands of another party. Hence arose the contending sects of Galenists and chemists, the former employing none but vegetable productions, the latter ridiculing the Galenical pharmacy as cumbrous and ineffectual, and placing their dependance on the newly-discovered properties of mercury, antimony, sulphur, and other metals and earths. It was probably very much owing to this schism that the practice of medicine was so much infested by quacks towards the close of the sixteenth and early in the seventeenth century, more so perhaps than at any other period. The real power of the remedies discarded by the most influential professors of the healing art could not be hidden, and might easily be exaggerated; and hence arose a vast multitude of empirics, each with his elixir vitæ, or some infallible medicine or other, which vended under a lofty name, and with the pretence of deep science, gained ready hold upon the credulity of the ignorant and the simple.

“He is a rare physician, do him right,
An excellent Paracelsian, and has done
Strange cures with mineral physic. He deals all
With spirits—he. He will not hear a word
Of Galen, or his tedious recipes.”[125]

Such was the state of medicine in England at this period: of its state in Italy we are not qualified to speak; but, from an instance presently to be quoted, it would seem to have been no more advanced than it was in England. And as there was no disease for which money could not purchase some infallible remedy, so the plague, as the object of most general apprehension, was best of all suited for the impostures of those whose treasury was the credulity of other people. A reference to any collection of tracts upon this subject, published before or during the year 1665, will satisfy the reader on this head: the examples which follow have occurred during a very cursory examination of one or two volumes, from which they might easily have been multiplied. We find in ‘A Ioyfull Iewell,.. first made and published in the Italian tung, by the famous and learned Knight and Doctor M. Leonardo Fioraventie,’ such receipts as this: “Of Elixir Vitæ, and how to make it, and of his great Vertues.” It consists of forty ingredients, such as ginger, juniper, sage, rose-leaves, aloes, figs, raisins, honey, &c., an equal quantity of each. This, if it did no good, could perhaps do little harm: but when it is professed that if any use it in time of pestilence, it is impossible he should be infected, the deceit becomes a source of serious evil. Another is worse, and joins blasphemy to impudence. “A great and miraculous secret to help the pestilence, with great ease and in a short time; a remedy and secret revealed of God miraculously. When a man hath a pestilent sore, let there be made a hole in the earth, and there let him be buryed all saving the neck and head, and there let him stand xii or xiiii houres and he shall be holpen, and then take him forth: and merveyl not that I write this medicine, because the earth is our mother, and that which purifieth all things, as we see by experience that the earth taketh forth all spots in cloth, it susteineth and maketh flesh tender if we bury it v or vi hours in the earth.” Or “the water of the sea hath a marveylous remedy in it against the pestilence, if they wash them therein iiii or v houres togither, or if need require let him stand x or xii houres therein.” Truly a man would be well “holpen” by such remedies: yet this Fioraventi, a Bolognese physician and alchemist of the sixteenth century, enjoyed considerable reputation among his contemporaries. The chemists of course were not sparing in their censures of their adversaries the Galenists, and the ingenious and industrious Iatrochemist, Dr. George Thomson, makes the following observations, in which the reader may be inclined partly to join: “These, especially if they can but surreptitiously get some chymical medicines from us, will, at a hazard, try what a dry fume of gums will do, a costly pomander, a composition of figs, rue, and walnuts (a rueful medicine to trust to if all were known), Mathias’ plague water, or aqua epidemica (I wonder they forgat St. Luke’s water for mere credit’s sake), an electuary of London treacle and wood-sorrel (I am persuaded a leg of veal and green-sauce is far better), bole-armeniac (no whit better than tobacco-clay, except that ‘tis dearer and farther fetched). If these avail not, if they light upon rich families (let the poor shift for themselves), they will provide for them (taking a share with them) pearls, hyacinth-stone prepared (after their gross way), bezoar-stone of the east, unicorn’s horn (equivalent to harts-horn), lignum aloes—strange they omitted gold, but that I believe they mean to put into their own purse.”[126] The ridicule is not undeserved, when we find such articles as crab’s eyes, julap of violets, oil of amber, confection of hyacinth, and other preparations of precious stones in the materia medica of the day. Dr. Thomson, however, has his own ‘Ternion of effectual Chymical Remedies,’ with which “noble chymical preparations if any desire to be accommodated in this sad time of contagion, let them repair to the place of his abode without Aldgate, nigh the Blew-Boare Inn.” Spirit of salt and oil of sulphur appear to have been favourite remedies with this class of practitioners.

The greatest and last plague which has appeared in London first showed itself in Westminster towards the end of the year 1664. In December a three months’ frost set in, which stopped its progress, but with the spring it returned, though doubtfully, and continued through May and June with more or less severity. At the beginning of August it set in with far greater violence, and was at its height about the beginning of September, when more than twelve thousand persons died weekly. Having reached this height, it began to decrease. By the beginning of November the city began to wear a more healthy aspect, and in December people were crowding back again as fast as they before had crowded out.[127] The total number of deaths is thus given:—

Within the city of London		9,887
In Westminster		8,403
Parishes without the Walls		28,888
Neighbourhood, including Hackney, Islington, Lambeth, Rotherhithe, &c., in all 12 parishes	}	21,420
		———
		68,598

Enough has been already said of the general appearance and course of such disorders. Instead therefore of another connected narrative, we shall only extract some of the most remarkable incidents and reflections to be found in Defoe’s and Pepys’s journals.

“The face of London was now indeed strangely altered, I mean the whole mass of buildings, city, liberties, suburbs, Westminster, Southwark, and altogether; for as to the particular part called the city, or within the walls, that was not yet much infected; but in the whole, the face of things, I say, was much altered: sorrow and sadness sat upon every face, and though some part were not overwhelmed, yet all looked deeply concerned; and as we saw it apparently coming on, so every one looked on himself and his family as in the utmost danger: were it possible to represent those times exactly to those that did not see them, and give the reader due ideas of the horror that everywhere presented itself, it must make just impressions upon their minds, and fill them with surprise. London might well be said to be all in tears; the mourners did not go about the streets indeed, for nobody put on black, or made a formal dress of mourning for their nearest friends; but the voice of mourning was truly heard in the streets; the shrieks of women and children at the windows and doors of their houses, where their nearest relations were perhaps dying, or just dead, were so frequent to be heard as we passed the streets, that it was enough to pierce the stoutest heart in the world to hear them. Tears and lamentations were seen almost in every house, especially in the first part of the visitation, for towards the latter end, men’s hearts were hardened, and death was always so much before their eyes, that they did not so much concern themselves for the loss of their friends, expecting that they themselves should be summoned the next hour.”[128]

“At the beginning of this surprising time, while the fears of the people were young, they were increased strangely by several odd accidents, which put altogether, it was really a wonder the whole body of the people did not rise as one man, and abandon their dwellings, leaving the place as a space of ground designed by Heaven for an Akeldama, doomed to be destroyed from the face of the earth, and that all that would be found in it would perish with it. I shall name but a few of these things; but sure they were so many, and so many wizards and cunning people propagating them, that I have often wondered there was any (women especially) left behind.

“In the first place, a blazing star or comet appeared for several months before the plague, as there did the year after, another, a little before the fire; the old women, and the phlegmatic hypochondriacal part of the other sex, whom I could almost call old women too, remarked, especially afterwards, though not till both those judgments were over, that those two comets passed directly over the city, and that so very near the houses, that it was plain they imported something peculiar to the city alone; and the comet before the pestilence was of a faint, dull, languid colour, and its motion very heavy, solemn, and slow; but that the comet before the fire was bright and sparkling; or as others said, flaming, and its motion swift and furious, and that accordingly one foretold a heavy judgment, slow but severe, terrible and frightful, as was the plague. But the other foretold a stroke, sudden, swift, and fiery, as was the conflagration; nay, so particular some people were, that as they looked upon that comet preceding the fire, they fancied that they not only saw it pass swiftly and fiercely, and could perceive the motion, with their eye, but even they heard it, that it made a rushing mighty noise, fierce and terrible, though at a distance, and but just perceivable.

“I saw both these stars, and I must confess, had had so much of the common notion of such things in my head, that I was apt to look upon them as the forerunners and warnings of God’s judgments, and especially, when the plague had followed the first, I yet saw another of the like kind, I could not but say, God had not yet sufficiently scourged the city.

ill220

“The apprehensions of the people were likewise strangely increased by the error of the times, in which I think the people, from what principle I cannot imagine, were more addicted to prophecies and astrological conjurations, dreams, and old wives’ tales, than ever they were before or since. Whether this unhappy temper was originally raised by the follies of some people who got money by it, that is to say, by printing predictions and prognostications, I know not: but certain it is, books frightened them terribly, such as Lilly’s Almanac, Gadbury’s Astrological Predictions, Poor Robin’s Almanac, and the like; also several pretended religious books, one entitled, ‘Come out of her, my people, lest ye be partaker of her Plagues;’ another called, ‘Fair Warning;’ another, ‘Britain’s Remembrancer,’ and many such; all or most part of which foretold, directly or covertly, the ruin of the city. Nay, some were so enthusiastically bold as to run about the streets with their oral predictions, pretending they were sent to preach to the city; and one in particular, who, like Jonah to Nineveh, cried in the streets, ‘Yet forty days, and London shall be destroyed.’ I will not be positive whether he said ‘yet forty days,’ or ‘yet a few days.’[129] Another ran about naked, except a pair of drawers about his waist, crying day and night, like a man that Josephus mentions, who cried, ‘Woe to Jerusalem!’ a little before the destruction of that city. So this poor naked creature cried, ‘O! the great and the dreadful God!’ and said no more, but repeated those words continually, with a voice and countenance full of horror, a swift pace, and nobody could ever find him to stop, or rest, or take any sustenance, at least that I could hear of. I met this poor creature several times in the streets, and would have spoken to him, but he would not enter into speech with me, or any one else, but kept on his dismal cries continually. These things terrified the people to the last degree; and especially when two or three times, as I have mentioned already, they found one or two in the bills dead of the plague at St. Giles’s.”[130]

Pepys. June 7.—“The hottest day that ever I felt in my life. This day, much against my will, I did see in Drury-lane two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors, and ‘Lord have mercy upon us’ writ there, which was a sad sight to me, being the first of that kind that to my remembrance I ever saw.”

June 17.—“It struck me very deep this afternoon, going with a hackney-coach down Holborn, from the Lord Treasurer’s: the coachman I found to drive easily and easily, at last stood still, and came down hardly able to stand, and told me he was suddenly struck very sick, and almost blind, he could not see: so I light, and went into another coach with a sad heart for the poor man, and for myself also, lest he should have been struck with the plague.”

Defoe. “I went all the first part of the time freely about the streets, though not so freely as to run myself into apparent danger, except when they dug the great pit in the churchyard of our parish of Aldgate. A terrible pit it was, and I could not resist my curiosity to go and see it; as near as I may judge, it was about forty feet in length, and about fifteen or sixteen feet broad; and at the time I first looked at it, about nine feet deep: but it was said they dug it near twenty feet deep afterwards, in one part of it, till they could go no deeper for the water; for they had, it seems, dug several large pits before this; for though the plague was long a coming to our parish, yet when it did come, there was no parish in or about London where it raged with such violence as in the parishes of Aldgate and Whitechapel.

“It was about the 10th of September that my curiosity led, or rather drove me to go and see this pit again, when there had been near four hundred people buried in it; and I was not content to see it in the day time, as I had done before, for then there would have been nothing to have seen but the loose earth; for all the bodies that were thrown in were immediately covered with earth by those they called the buriers, which at other times were called bearers; but I resolved to go in the night, and see some of them thrown in. There was a strict order to prevent people coming to those pits, and that was only to prevent infection; but after some time that order was more necessary, for people that were infected, and near their end, and delirious also, would run to those pits wrapt in blankets, or rugs, and throw themselves in, and, as they said, bury themselves. I got admittance into the churchyard by being acquainted with the sexton who attended, who, though he did not refuse me at all, yet earnestly persuaded me not to go; telling me very seriously, for he was a good religious and sensible man, that it was indeed their business and duty to venture and to run all hazards, and that in it they might hope to be preserved; but that I had no apparent call to it but my own curiosity, which, he said, he believed I would not pretend was sufficient to justify my running that hazard. I told him I had been pressed in my mind to go, and that perhaps it might be an instructing sight, and one that would not be without its uses. ‘Nay,’ said the good man, ‘if you will venture upon that score, in name of God go in, for, depend upon it, it will be a sermon to you; it may be the best you ever heard in your life. It is a speaking sight,’ said he, ‘and has a voice with it, and a loud one, to call us all to repentance;’ and with that he opened the door, and said, ‘Go if you will.’

“His discourse had shocked my resolution a little, and I stood wavering for a good while; but just at that interval I saw two links come over from the end of the Minories, and heard the bellman, and then appeared a dead-cart, as they called it, coming over the streets, so I could no longer resist my desire of seeing it, and went in.... It had in it sixteen or seventeen bodies; some were wrapt up in linen sheets, some in rugs, some little other than naked, or so loose that what covering they had fell from them in the shooting out of the cart, and they fell quite naked amongst the rest; but the matter was not much to them, nor the indecency to any one else, seeing they were all dead, and were to be huddled together into the common grave of mankind, as we may call it, for here was no difference made, but poor and rich went together; there was no other way of burials, neither was it possible there should, for coffins were not to be had for the prodigious numbers that fell in such a calamity as this.

“It was reported, by way of scandal upon the buriers, that if any corpse was delivered to them, decently wound up, as we called it then, in a winding sheet, tied over the head and feet, which some did, and which was generally of good linen—I say it was reported that the buriers were so wicked as to strip them in the cart, and carry them quite naked to the ground; but as I cannot credit any thing so vile among Christians, and at a time so filled with terrors as that was, I can only relate it, and leave it undetermined.

“Innumerable stories also went about of the cruel behaviour and practice of nurses who attended the sick, and of their hastening on the fate of those they attended in their sickness[131].... It is to be observed, that the women were in all this calamity the most rash, fearless, and desperate creatures; and as there were vast numbers that went about as nurses to tend those that were sick, they committed a great many petty thieveries in the houses where they were employed, and some of them were publicly whipped for it, when perhaps they ought rather to have been hanged for examples, for numbers of houses were robbed on these occasions; till at length the parish officers were sent to recommend nurses to the sick, and always took an account of who it was they sent, so as that they might call them to account, if the house had been abused where they were placed. But these robberies extended chiefly to wearing clothes, linen, and what rings or money they could come at, when the person died who was under their care, but not to a general plunder of the houses; and I could give you an account of one of these nurses, who, several years after, being on her death-bed, confessed with the utmost horror the robberies she had committed at the time of her being a nurse, and by which she had enriched herself to a great degree; but as for murders, I do not find that there ever was any proof of the facts, in the manner as it has been reported, except as above. They did tell me indeed of a nurse in one place that laid a wet cloth on the face of a dying patient whom she tended, and so put an end to his life, who was just expiring before; and another that smothered a young woman she was looking to when she was in a fainting fit, and would have come to herself; some that killed them by giving them one thing, some another, and some starved them by giving them nothing at all. But these stories had two marks of suspicion that always attended them, which caused me always to slight them, and to look upon them as mere stories that people continually frighted each other with. That, wherever it was that we heard it, they always placed the scene at the further end of the town opposite or most remote from where you were to hear it. In the next place, of whatsoever part you heard the story, the particulars were always the same, especially that of laying a wet double clout on a dying man’s face, and that of smothering a young gentlewoman, so that it was apparent, at least to my judgment, that there was more of tale than of truth in those things.”[132]

“I had some little obligations upon me to go to my brother’s house, which was in Coleman-street parish, and which he had left to my care, and I went at first every day, but afterwards only once or twice a week.

“In these walks I had many dismal scenes before my eyes; as particularly of persons falling dead in the streets, terrible shrieks and screechings of women, who in their agonies would throw open their chamber windows, and cry out in a dismal surprising manner. It is impossible to describe the variety of postures in which the passions of the poor people would express themselves.

“Passing through Tokenhouse-yard, in Lothbury, of a sudden a casement violently opened just over my head, and a woman gave three frightful screeches, and then cried, ‘Oh! death, death, death!’ in a most inimitable tone, and which struck me with horror and a chillness in my very blood. There was nobody to be seen in the whole street, neither did any other window open, for people had no curiosity now in any case; nor could any body help one another; so I went on to pass into Bell-alley.

Just in Bell-alley, on the right hand of the passage, there was a more terrible cry than that, though it was not so directed out at the window, but the whole family was in a terrible fright, and I could hear women and children run screaming about the rooms like distracted, when a garret-window opened, and somebody from a window the other side the alley called and asked, ‘What is the matter.’ Upon which, from the first window it was answered, ‘O Lord! my old master has hanged himself.’ The other asked again, ‘Is he quite dead?’ and the first answered, ‘Ay, ay, dead and cold.’ This person was a merchant and a deputy-alderman, and very rich. I care not to mention his name, though I knew his name too, but that would be a hardship to the family, which is now flourishing again.

“But this is but one. It is scarce credible what dreadful cases happened in particular families every day: people in the rage of the distemper, or in the torment of their swellings, which was indeed intolerable, running out of their own government, raving and distracted, and oftentimes laying violent hands upon themselves, throwing themselves out at their windows, shooting themselves, &c.; mothers murdering their own children in their lunacy; some dying of mere grief, as a passion; some of mere fright and surprise, without any infection at all; others frighted into idiotism and foolish distractions; some into despair and lunacy; others into melancholy madness.

“The pain of the swelling was in particular very violent, and to some intolerable; the physicians and surgeons may be said to have tortured many poor creatures, even to death. The swellings in some grew hard, and they applied violent drawing plasters or poultices to break them; and if these did not do, they cut and scarified them in a terrible manner. In some those swellings were made hard, partly by the force of the distemper, and partly by their being too violently drawn, and were so hard that no instrument could cut them; and then they burnt them with caustics, so that many died raving mad with the torment, and some in the very operation. In these distresses, some for want of help to hold them down in their beds, or to look to them, laid hands upon themselves as above; some broke out into the streets, perhaps naked, and would run directly down to the river, if they were not stopped by the watchmen or other officers, and plunge themselves into the water, wherever they found it.”[133]

“One of the worst days we had in the whole time, as I thought, was in the beginning of September, when indeed good people were beginning to think that God was resolved to make a full end of the people in this miserable city. This was at that time when the plague was fully come into the eastern parishes. The parish of Aldgate, if I may give my opinion, buried above 1000 a week for two weeks, though the bills did not say so many; but it surrounded me at so dismal a rate, that there was not a house in twenty uninfected. In the Minories, in Houndsditch, and in those parts of Aldgate parish about the Butcher-row, and the alleys over against me, I say in those places death reigned in every corner. Whitechapel parish was in same condition, and though much less than the parish I lived in, yet buried near 600 a week, by the bills; and in my opinion near twice as many. Whole families, and indeed whole streets of families, were swept away together, insomuch as it was frequent for neighbours to call to the bellman to go to such and such houses and fetch out the people, for that they were all dead.

“And indeed the work of removing the dead bodies by carts was now grown so very odious and dangerous, that it was complained of that the bearers did not take care to clear such houses, where all the inhabitants were dead, but that some of the bodies lay unburied, till the neighbouring families were offended with the stench, and consequently infected. And this neglect of the officers was such, that the churchwardens and constables were summoned to look after it, and even the justices of the Hamlets were obliged to venture their lives among them to quicken and encourage them; for innumerable of the bearers died of the distemper, infected by the bodies they were obliged to come so near; and had it had not been that the number of people who wanted employment, and wanted bread, as I have said before, was so great that necessity drove them to undertake any thing, and venture any thing, they would never have found people to be employed, and then the bodies of the dead would have lain above ground, and have perished and rotted in a dreadful manner.

“But the magistrates cannot be enough commended in this, that they kept such good order for the burying of the dead, that as fast as any of those they employed to carry off or bury the dead fell sick and died, as was many times the case, they immediately supplied the places with others, which, by reason of the great number of poor that was left out of business, was not hard to do. This occasioned that notwithstanding the infinite number of people which died, and were sick, almost all together, yet they were always cleared away and carried off every night, so that it was never to be said of London that the living were not able to bury the dead.

“As the desolation was greater during those terrible times, so the amazement of the people increased, and a thousand unaccountable things they would do in the violence of their fright, as others did the same in the agonies of their distemper, and this part was very affecting: some went roaring and crying, and wringing of their hands along the streets; some would go praying, and lifting up their hands to heaven, calling upon God for mercy. I cannot say, indeed, whether this was not in their distraction; but be it so, it was still an indication of a more serious mind, when they had the use of their senses, and was much better, even as it was, than the frightful yellings and cryings that every day, and especially in the evenings, were heard in some streets. I suppose the world has heard of the famous Solomon Eagle, an enthusiast: he, though not infected at all but in his head, went about denouncing of judgment upon the city in a frightful manner, sometimes quite naked, and with a pan of burning charcoal on his head. What he said, or pretended indeed, I could not learn.

ill230