SYDENHAM. 93 wlio attended the funerals of their friends one evening, were the next carried to their own long home ; and yet the worst was not certain, for the disease, as yet, had no relaxation." — Such is the relation of an eye-witness*, who was one of the 'physicians appointed by government to visit the sick. The first appearance of this dreadful pesti- lence is thus described. — " Towards the close of the year 1664, two or three persons died suddenly, attended with symptoms that plainly manifested the nature of the disease : hereupon some timid neigh- bours moved into the city, and unfortunately carried the contagion with them ; and, for want of iconfining the persons who were first seized, the
- |wliole city was, in a little time, irrecoverably in-
ifected. As soon as it was rumoured that the iplague was in the city, it was impossible to relate what accounts were spread of its fatality ; every one predicted its future devastations, and terrified each other with remembrance of a former pesti- lence. It seems quite ascertained, that it was imported into London by goods from Holland, j brought thither from the Levant, and first broke put in a house in Long-acre, near the end of |Drury-lane, where those goods were carried, and first opened ; two Frenchmen dying, the family endeavoured to conceal it, but it spread from that house to others, by the unwary communication with those who were sick ; and infected the parish- ofiScers who were employed about the dead : it 'went on, and proceeded from person to person,, jfrom house to house. I * Hodges— Loimologia,
