The record-union., 1897-03-08

clothes off the dead bodies and the bed
clothes from others where they lay
dead
AN EXTRAORDINARY CURE.
1t is most certain that it, by the shut
ting up of houses, the sick had not been
confined, multitudes, who in the hight
of their fever We're delirious and dis
tIacted. would have been continually
running up and down the streets; and
even as it was. a very great number did
SO, and offered all sorts of violence to
those they met, even just as a mad dog
runs on and bites at everyone he meets.
Nor can [ doubt but that, should one of
these infected, diseased creatures have
bitten any man or woman while the
frenzy of the distemper was upon them,
they q mean the person so wounded)
would as certainly have been incurably
injected as one that was sick before and
had the tokens upon him.
heard of one infected creature who,
running out of his bed in his shirt, in
the anguish and agony of his swellings
(of which he had three upon him), got
his shoes on, and went to put on his
coat; but the nurse resisting, and
Snatchlng the coat from him, he threw
her down, run over her, ran down stairs
and into the street directly to the
Thames, i'll his shirt, the nurse running
after him, and calling to the watch to
stop him. But the watchman, fright
ened at the man and afraid to touch
nm, let him go on; upon which he ran
down to the Still Yard Stairs threw
away his shirt and plunged into the
Thames, and being a good swimmer,
swan quite over the river; and the tide
being coming in as they call it Chat
IS, running Westward, he reached the
land not till he came about the Falcon
Stairs, where, landing and finding no
people there, ii being in the night, he ran
about the streets there, naked as he was,
for good while, when, it being by that
time high water, he takes the river
again and swan back to the Still Yard,
landed, ran up the streets to his own
house, knocking al the door, went up the
stairs and into his bed again; and that
this terrible experiment cured him of
the plague-that is to say, that the vio-
lent motion of his arms and legs
stretched the parts where the swellings
he had upon him We're Chat is to say,
under his arms and in his groin), and
caused them to ripen and break; and
that the cold of the water abated the
fever in his blood.
have only to add that l do not relate
this any more than some of the other
as fact within my own knowledge, so
as that / can VOuch the truth of them;
and especially that of the man being
cured by the eXtravagant adventure,
slble, but ii may serve to confirm the
many desperate things which the dis
tressed people, falling into deliriums and
What we call ght-headedness, were fire.
Quently run upon at that time, and how
infinitely more such there would have
been If such people had not been con-
fined by the shutting up of houses; and
this l take to be the best, if not the only
good thing, which was performed by
that severe method.
On the other hand, the complaints and
the murmuringS We're very bitter
against the thing itself
1t would pierce the hearts of all that
came by to hear the piteous cries of
those infected people, who. being thus
out of their understandings by the vio-
lence of their pain or the heat of their
blood, We're either shut in or perhaps
tied in their beds and chairs, to prevent
their doing themselves hurt, and who
would make a dreadful outcry at their
being confined. and at their being per-