A Journal Of The Plague Year

The narrator writes that many “poor disconsolate” (145) people fled to the country or boated upstream to avoid illness. The narrator debates once again whether or not the sick had a “wicked Inclination” (148) to infect others but concludes they did not. He returns to the question of confinement’s effectiveness. Based on his brief tenure as an examiner, he relays stories of people who seemed perfectly fine until they collapsed, dead. He also notes that many of the sick became delirious and broke out of their houses, telling the story of one man who ran through the streets naked, swam across the Thames, and returned home cured of his illness. Surveying these stories, he suggests that keeping the mad out of the streets was the only positive effect of confinement. He goes on to say that examiners could do little to survey who had the infection without exposing themselves to it. He admits that, to avoid the plague, he paid someone else to take over his duty as examiner after three weeks. 

The narrator discusses the height of the plague: during the final weeks of August and September, up to 3,000 might die in one night.