BUT what greatly contributed to the Loss of People thus shut up, was the wicked Practices of Nurses (for they are not to be mention’d but in the most bitter Terms): These Wretches, out of Greediness to plunder the Dead, would strangle their Patients, and charge it to the Distemper in their Throats; others would secretly convey the pestilential Taint from Sores of the infected to those who were well; and nothing indeed deterred these abandoned Miscreants from prosecuting their avaritious Purposes by all the Methods their Wickedness could invent; who, although they were without Witnesses to accuse them, yet it is not doubted but divine Vengeance will overtake such wicked Barbarities with due Punishment: Nay, some were remarkably struck from Heaven in the Perpetration of their Crimes, and one particularly amongst many, as she was leaving the House of a Family, all dead, loaded with her Robberies, fell down dead under her Burden in the Streets: And the Case of a worthy Citizen was very remarkable, who being suspected dying by his Nurse, was before-hand stripped by her; but recovering again, he came a second Time into the World naked. And so many were the Artifices of these barbarous Wretches, that it is to be hoped, Posterity will take Warning how they trust them again in like Cases; and that their past Impunities will not be a Means of bringing on us again the like Judgment. MOREOVER, this shutting up infected Houses, made the Neighbours fly from theirs, who otherwise might have been a Help to them on many Accounts; and I verily believe that many who were lost might have now been alive, had not the tragical Mark upon their Door drove proper Assistances from them. AND this is confirmed by the Examples of other pestilential Contagions, which have been observed not to cease, until the Doors of the Sick were let open, and they had the Privilege of going Abroad; of the same Authority is the Custom of other Nations, who have due Regard to that Liberty that is necessary for the Comforts both of Body and Mind.