Hodges is by no means silent on the important subject of prevention, and he justly says: “When the nature and peculiar qualities of this disease are known and reported by physicians, such laws should be provided as might best conduce to prevent its spreading, if not to its utter extirpation.” The punishment of those who frighten the populace by prophecies and the like; the timely separation of the sick from the well; house-to-house visitation (which was actually carried out); the disinfection of the air by fumigations; the daily cleansing of streets, sinks, and canals (“because stench and nastiness are justily reckoned the entertainers of infection”); the burning of pastilles; the killing of “dogs, cats, and other domestic brutes,” which carry the infection from place to place; and great attention to personal health, are among the measures which he advocates. He has no belief in the benefit to be derived from taking excrement and urine, which were given as antidotes by some old nurses; but, on the other hand, he had implicit faith in liberal potations of sack (“middle-aged, neat, fine, bright, racy, and of a walnut flavour”). With regard to the use of tobacco, he says: “I must confess myself at uncertainties about it, though as to myself I am its professed enemy, and was accustomed to supply its place as an antidote with sack.” He did not believe in amulets, which were then much in vogue; some being alleged to have a diffusive magnetic value; others drawing the poison out of the body “as amber attracts straws,” some serving to invigorate nature. Walnut shells filled with mercury, arsenic mixed with wax and a variety of other drugs, and dried toads seem to have been the amulets most generally worn.