HOSACK ON THE LAWS OF CONTAGION. 209 



relates that when he and other people of condition, who had fled from 

 the plague, returned to London, they hardly missed one of their friends 

 or acquaintances, the mortality having been confined almost entirely to 

 the lowest orders of the people. " At that time, too, the streets of Lon- 

 don," says Thornton, " were narrow, crooked, and incommodious, the 

 buildings chiefly of wood, dark, close, and ill contrived, and by the seve- 

 ral stories projecting beyond each other as they rose over the narrow 

 streets, the circulation of the air was almost entirely obstructed. To 

 these inconveniences, he adds, may in some measure be attributed the 

 destruction which had been repeatedly made in the city by the visita- 

 tion of the plague ; for as the air was confined, so the noisome vapours 

 and pestilential atoms were harboured and nourished. Though the 

 destruction of London by the great fire in the succeeding year (1666) 

 occasioned great temporary distress, yet, in the end, it proved of the 

 utmost utility ; for, by the rebuilding of the city, and the enlargement 

 of the streets, the free circulation of air was admitted, the offensive va- 

 pours expelled, and the city freed from all pestilential disorders."* It 

 is also stated by Dr. Hodges,f that at the breaking out of this plague, the 

 city was unusually full of people : he supposes there must have been 

 upwards of one hundred thousand persons more than usual in the city; 

 and, according to Dr. Baynard, during the progress of this merciless pesti- 

 lence, there was such a general calm and serenity of weather, as if both 

 wind and rain had been expelled the kingdom, and that for many weeks 

 together not the least breath of wind could be discovered. 



It is also worthy of remark, that the city of Oxford, to which the 

 parliament was removed during the prevalence of the disease, remained 



* Thornton's History of London. j De Peste. 



29 



