We now approach the year 1665, so notable for the terrible pestilence which afflicted London, and we may well take the opportunity of seeing what was the practice of physicians at this time. The best account of the plague is that written by =Dr. Nathaniel Hodges=, under the title “Loimologia.” This treatise, originally written in Latin and published by the author in 1672, was translated by Dr. John Quincy in 1720. From this valuable work we gain some insight into the moral and physical conditions of the population, and of other causes which tended to increase the virulence of the epidemic. It was at the close of the year 1664 that cases of plague--a disease which had previously committed extensive ravages in London--began to occur, and the fears of the inhabitants were fomented by astrologers and others, who tormented the ignorant with prophecies as to the evils which would occur from the “conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in Sagittarius” and the like. Again, the action of the magistrates, who ordered that infected houses should be marked with a red cross and the legend “Lord, have mercy upon us,” and who further set a guard upon such houses to prevent either ingress or egress, was probably most mischievous, as tending to spread the infection amongst all the inhabitants of a house, and to keep it alive within the confined area of the city. Hodges truly remarks that the proper course would have been to immediately remove the infected to proper lodgings provided without the walls. He continues: “But what greatly contributed to the loss of people thus shut up was the wicked practice of nurses (for they are not to be mentioned 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,” &c. If we are to receive the statement seriously (and Hodges is a temperate writer), it throws considerable light on the moral condition of the lower orders.