Loimologia: Or, an Historical Account of the Plague in London in 1665: With Precautionary Directions Against the Like ContagionHodges, Nathaniel
History
Loimologia: Or, an Historical Account of the Plague in London in 1665: With Precautionary Directions Against the Like Contagion
Hodges, Nathaniel
Plague -- England -- London -- Early works to 1800
IT is altogether foreign to my Design here, to enumerate all the
Appearances that belong to a pestilential Constitution, because a great
deal may be ascribed to Phantasie and Conjecture, as the Influence of
Comets, and the Conjunctions of Planets, with others of like Nature: For
what strange Notions have been broached concerning this Contagion, which
was imported to us from Abroad? Are the Tails of Comets always armed with
pestilential Arrows? Or is the Air the more impure and unhealthful? Had we
any Famine before the last Sickness? Or had we portentious Swarms of
Insects like Clouds over us? No, just the contrary, as we before observed;
all Things from Nature were promising and serene, and this Destroyer
invaded us on a sudden from strange Countries; it is therefore of more
Advantage to our Design here, to take all its concomitant Signs from its
manifest Effects.
AND indeed there are not many peculiar to a pestilential Fever, as that is
chiefly a Collection, or an Epitome of all other Fevers together, which in
such a Confederacy are not therefore without a tedious Work to be
enumerated in all their Affections; I shall therefore satisfie my self
with describing such only which are most obvious to common Observation,
and are met with in most infected Persons: And these for Method Sake I
shall distribute into two Classes.
_FIRST_, The manifest Signs of Infection.
_SECONDLY_, The Appearances after Infection.
BUT hereunto I think it necessary to premise, that a Pestilence puts on
sometimes one, and at others another Appearance, and sometimes even
contrary ones, according to the Constitution or Age of the Patient, the
Season of the Year, present or preceding Distempers, a faulty Way of
Living, and the different Means of Communication, both with Respect to
Virulence and Degree.
THE Symptoms of the first Class are Horror, Vomiting, Delirium, Dizziness,
Head-ach, and Stupefaction.
OF the second, a Fever, Watching, Palpitation of the Heart, Bleeding at
Nose, and a great Heat about the _Precordia_.
THE Signs more peculiar to a Pestilence, are those Pustules which the
common People call _Blains_, Buboes, Carbuncles, Spots, and those Marks
called _Tokens_; of all which distinctly.
I do not know indeed throughout the whole Compass of Nature, (as before it
hath been frequently hinted) any Thing so subtile as the pestilential
Poison, and what will penetrate the Body with so much Swiftness and
Secrecy, insomuch that it is not perceived sometimes till long after its
Entrance; what therefore is commonly said of its sensible Attack, and that
the infected feel its first Insult as from a sudden Blow, is more the
Effect of a deluded Imagination and Conjecture, than any solid Judgment;
as the Populace are apt enough to frame strange Conceits out of their own
Heads, and what hath long obtained amongst them is very difficult to
erace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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