“Loveing ffriend,—Yours of the 16th instant I have received and give you hearty thankes for that particular accompt you gave me of your affayres. If I can possibly gett time I thinke to write to you againe on Thursday: but I thought it not amiss for the inclosed’s sake, to write a few lines now, and to give you my thoughts of the death of Tolhurst’s sister. According to your description of her, there hath not one of those thousands yet dyed here with all the signall characters of this present Plague more evident than she had, which this inclosed will in parte confirme to you. Concerning the external effects of this internall infection, there are these three, with one or more or all of which this distemper is usually attended, botches, blaines, and carbuncles, to which I may add a fourth, spotts commonly called the tokens, and are very symtomatical never ariseing till the full state of the disease, even when deathe stands at the doore: for very few or none live that are so markt. For the botches or pestilential bubos, they usually aries but in 3 places, whereof the principal emunctorys of the body are:—behind or under the ears when the braine is afflicted; under each arme when the heart or vitalls are afflicted; in the groynes principally when the liver is afflicted. The blaines and carbuncles may and doe aries generally in any parte of the body, necke, face, throate, backe, thighs, armes, leggs, etc., and all of them very hard: and obstinate to be dealt with withall, and must have several proceedings with them: and if any of them, after once appearing, either fall or retire backe againe, it is a very bad and dangerous symptome. The botches sometimes rise to a very great buiggnes, especially under the armes and in the groines; if so under the ears they quickly choake or kill with paine, there being no roome for them to bee extended: if they rise something in an oblongish forme, and red at the first, it is so much the better then if round, though as they grow to more maturity they will tend to a more round forme, as they come to ripen, especially on the topp; if they rise white it argues coldnes and want of heate and spot to drive them out, and must bee more carefully helpt forwards with internal drivers and externall drawers. The blaines rise first like blisters, but not puffy, as if sweld with wind or water, but hard, not yielding to the touch: but if they come forward to any maturity (which they are very difficult to bee brought to, and many dye if they have blaines) there will bee a very hard and knotty bunch of corrupt matter in them. The carbuncles, though it may be rise roundly like a pinn’s head, yet presently rise up to a pointed boile, very hard: sometimes fiery red, sometimes black, and sometimes blewish in places: red the best, ye others worst. All of these risings (if they be accurately observed at the first; but especially the carbuncles and blaines) have a particular symptome annexed to them, viz. they are generally circled