This acute penetrating nature of the disease itself was such, and the infection was received so imperceptibly, that the most exact caution could not secure us while in the place; but I must be allowed to believe,--and I have so many examples fresh in my memory to convince me of it that I think none can resist their evidence,--I say, I must be allowed to believe that no one in this whole nation ever received the sickness or infection but who received it in the ordinary way of infection from somebody, or the clothes, or touch, or stench of somebody that was infected before.
SPREAD OF THE PLAGUE THROUGH NECESSITIES OF THE POOR
Before people came to right notions of the infection, and of infecting one another, people were only shy of those that were really sick; a man with a cap upon his head, or with cloths round his neck, which was the case of those that had swellings there,--such was indeed frightful. But when we saw a gentleman dressed, with his band on, and his gloves in his hand, his hat upon his head, and his hair combed, of such we had not the least apprehensions, and people conversed a great while freely, especially with their neighbors and such as they knew. But when the physicians assured us that the danger was as well from the sound,--that is, the seemingly sound,--as the sick, and that those people that thought themselves entirely free were oftentimes the most fatal; and that it came to be generally understood that people were sensible of it, and of the reason of it; then, I say, they began to be jealous of everybody, and a vast number of people locked themselves up so as not to come abroad into any company at all, nor suffer any that had been abroad in promiscuous company to come into their houses or near them; at least not so near them as to be within the reach of their breath or of any smell from them; and when they were obliged to converse at a distance with strangers, they would always have preservatives in their mouths, and about their clothes, to repel and keep off the infection.
It must be acknowledged that when people began to use these cautions, they were less exposed to danger, and the infection did not break into such houses so furiously as it did into others before; and thousands of families were preserved, speaking with due reserve to the direction of divine Providence, by that means.