“Many others held a middle course, not confining themselves so closely in their diet as the first, nor indulging themselves so freely as the second in drinking and other excesses. These used things in moderation, according to their appetites, and without shutting themselves up, went about, some of them carrying flowers in their hands, some scented herbs, and some divers kinds of spices, which they often applied to their noses, thinking it best to cherish the brain with scents of this kind, since all the air seemed thick and noisome with the stench of the dead bodies, and the diseased parts, and the medicines. Others were of a more inhuman opinion (though perhaps a safer one), and said that there was no better remedy against pestilences, nor so good, as to run away from them. And many men and women, influenced by this reasoning, and caring for nothing but themselves, abandoned their own cities, their own houses, their habitations, and their relations, and their property, and went to other men’s country establishments, or at least to their own: as if the anger of God, when stirred up to punish the iniquity of men with this pestilence, would not follow them wherever they were, but had only determined to destroy those who were to be found within the walls of their city; or as if they thought that no one ought to remain in it, and that its last hour was come. And although these, with their various modes of thinking, did not all die, so also did they not all escape: on the contrary, many of every opinion growing sick everywhere, those who while themselves well had given the example to those who still remained so, were left to languish almost entirely deserted. And, not to mention that one fellow–citizen avoided another, and hardly any neighbour took any care of another, and relations seldom or never visited each other, with such alarm had this calamity seized on the hearts of men and women, that brother abandoned brother, and uncle nephew, and sister brother, and often the wife her husband; and, which is yet stranger and hardly credible, fathers and mothers were shy of visiting and attending upon their children, as if they were not their own. The result was, that the countless multitude of men and women who were ill, had nothing to depend upon, except either the kindness of friends, and these were few, or else the avarice of servants, who were induced by large and disproportionate wages to give their attendance. And even of them the number was small, and men and women they were of rude understanding, and generally unaccustomed to such services, and hardly of any use except to hand to the patients such things as they asked for, or to observe when they died: and often while rendering such services as these, they lost their lives for their pains. From this desertion of the sick by their neighbours, and relations, and friends, and this scarcity of servants, there spread a practice such as had hardly ever