p. 3 Tokens: in modern parlance, cutaneous lesions resulting from subcutaneous haemorrhaging, a common plague symptom. Defoe owned a copy of Kephale's Medela Pestilentia, which says they were otherwise known as 'God's Tokens.' ...p.6 Spotted Fever: a "politic word" for the plague...
Apprehensions...Summer being at Hand: from Hippocrates descended the idea of a special relationship between climate or seasons and disease. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the prevailing view was the plague originated in hot climates, flourished in the heat of summer, and abated in the cold of winter...
p. 15 hardly anything of Reformation: observing the King and his courtiers at Oxford during the Plague, Anthony Wood noted in his diary: "The greater part of the courtiers were high, proud, insolent...To give a further character of the court, they thought they were neat and gay in their apparell, yet they were nasty and beastly...Rude, rough, whoremongers; vain, empty, careless."
p. 18 a blazing star or comet: in mid-December 1664, and early April 1665, the appearance of comets over London were related to plague in popular literature and scientific discussions....
p. 20 run about Naked: ... The literature of Quakerism contains many instances of the practice of "testifying by signs." London, as the new Babylon, was often the subject of prophetic doom. Defoe had in mind the notorious case of Solomon Eagles (or Eccles), a musician and convert to Quakerism who "as a sign" ran naked through Bartholomew Fair at Smithfield with a pan of fire or brimstone on his head, crying "repentance" and "remember Sodom." But that incident took place in 1662.
p. 29 amulets: widely recommended and widely disapproved in the seventeenth century, they had the authority of Andre Pare ('a sachet of some poison over the heart') and Van Helmont, whose use of a toad for the purpose was respectfully mentioned and imitated..."Those who use Toads either bore a hole through their heads, and so hang them about their Necks, or make Troches of them."...
p. 29 Dead-Carts: the bearers who collected the bodies of the dead in carts or barrows, obviously not the most squeamish of men, were the objects of constant criticism in times of plague for their callousness.
p. 35 Searchers: ...The custom of appointing "ancient women" to be searchers, whose function in times of plague was to seek out the dead and report the cause of death to parish clerks, was strongly criticized...
p. 36 Botch, or Purple: physicians and writers on the plague attempted to distinguish the external manifestations of the malady. The various spot, swellings, tumours were called tokens, botches, carbuncles, buboes, or blains. Kemp's Brief Treatise describes the botch as "a swelling about the bigness of a nutmeg, Wallnut, or Hen's Egge, and cometh in the neck, or behind the Eares if the Brain be affected; or under the Arm-pits, from the Heart; or in the Groin, from the liver; for the cure whereof, pull off the feathers from the Rump of a Cock, Hen, or Pigeon, and rub the Tayl with Salt, and hold its Bill, and set the Tayl hard to the swelling, and it will die."
p. 39 a red Rod or Wand: the earliest surviving English plague orders (1543) require that an infected person or anyone in contact with an infected person carry a white wand in his hand. In subsequent orders the wand continued to be required, sometimes white, sometimes red...
p. 64 conveyed by the fatal Breath: ..."one cause of the sickness is the Corruption and Infection of the Air; for when the Plague begins to raign in any Place...the Sick continually not only breathe out of their Mouths, but send out of their Bodies steams and vapours, which being disperst and scattered in the Air, are soon drawn in by the breath of others..."
p. 65 immediate Stroke from Heaven: the wrath of God theory was a venerable one...
p. 78 Garlick and Rue: in addition to these, other herbs, spices, barks, flowers and seeds were recommended: aloes, amber, ambergris, angelica, balm, bay leaves, benjamin, campana roots, camphor, cinnamon, citrine sanderes, cloves, emula, frankincense, gentian, hyssop, juniper, lavender, mace, marjoram, mint, musk, myrrh, nutmeg, origanum, penny royal, rosemary, saffron, sage, sassafras, sorax, tansy, thyme, wormwood....
p. 105 kill all the Dogs and Cats: the plague orders regularly called for the destruction of domestic animals...
p. 165 Air...corrupted and infected: here...Defoe views the plague from the vantage of a contagionist rather a miasmatist...The miasmatist conception was well stated by Boghurst: "...The Plague or Pestilence is a most subtle, peculiar, insinuating, venomous, deleterious Exhalation of the Foeces of the Earth extracted into the Aire by the heat of the sun, and difflated from place to place by the winds, and most tymes gradually but sometymes immediately aggressing apt bodies."
p. 195 People...flock'd to Town: "And a delightfull thing it is to see the towne full of people again as now it is; and shops begin to open, though in many places seven or eight together, and more, all shut; and yet the towne is full compared to what it used to be. (Pepys, Diary, 5 Jan. 1665-6)...
p. 204 Wine: an antidote of hoary respectability...
Selected from the endotes to
A Journal of the Plague Year, by Daniel Defoe
Oxford World Classics, Edited with notes by Louis Landa
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