MISCELLANEA 211 



up for dead by the bearers, placed in the dead-cart, and upon 

 and around him a number of dead were laid. All the while 

 that the bearers were collecting their gruesome cargo, and piling 

 the bodies into the dead-cart, the "piper" slept soundly, 

 surrounded on all sides by the plague-stricken dead. He was 

 nearly buried alive. But in spite of his intimate contact with 

 the dead, he did not contract the plague. It should also be 

 remembered that this " piper," from the nature of his calling, 

 mingled freely with people of the lower classes, upon whom, 

 according to Defoe, the incidence of the plague was very heavy, 

 and must have come many times into contact with persons 

 suffering from the disease, either manifest or not. 



From Dr. Boghurst's " Loimographia " we may extract the 

 following, which shows how though some persons may come into 

 the most intimate and prolonged relationship with the infected, 

 throughout an extended period of time, in fact during the whole 

 of the plague year, yet they do not contract the disease. " I 

 commonly dressed forty sores in a day, held the pulse of 

 patients sweating in their beds half or quarter of an hour together, 

 let blood, administered clysters to the sick, held them up in their 

 beds to keep them from strangling and choking,* half an hour 

 together commonly, and suffered their breathing in my face 

 several times when they were dying ; ate and drank with them, 

 especially those that had sores ; sat down by their bedsides and 

 upon their beds, discoursing with them an hour together." 



It is not necessary to give any further quotations. These 

 serve to indicate my general purpose. It seems, therefore, there 

 are those who are immune to the disease ; those who are only 

 difficultly susceptible ; those who fall easily. The quotations 

 further show — and a full reading of the " Journal " would 

 demonstrate this even more cogently — that the disease does 

 manifest an incidence in its effects and carries off the foolish, 

 reckless, vicious dirty, and thievish in greater numbers than those 

 who are wiser, more discreet, cleaner, and more capable of 

 adjusting themselves instinctively or intuitively to sudden 

 emergencies and new conditions. In as far as it does that, 

 plague serves to purge a community of undesirable units and to 

 leave it sounder in those attributes tliat are essential in civilised 

 communities. It exercises a selective and therefore evolutionary 

 effect upon the race which it visits. I have been assured by 

 travellers, some of them medical men, that in other epidemic 

 diseases, such as yellow fever, the incidence of the disease is very 

 much heavier upon those whose habits are dirty and licentious 



* This evidently indicates the pneumonic or more infectious form of 

 plague. To allow such to " breathe in one's face " means almost cei'tain 

 infection to susceptible people. 



