60 • BeginningsIn rare moments of reflection, when he wasn’t with patients, tending his herb
garden, or relaxing with the lute he played expertly, William Boghurst might
be found atop the church tower of Saint Giles in the Fields, gazing at the
city below. In the distance stood the cathedral and throngs of people passing
by the shops of Cheapside. Beyond lay the River Thames, dotted with wher-
ries navigating around the supports under London Bridge. From the per-
spective of his poor suburban parish, which perpetually had more chronic ill-
ness than most places inside the walls, the prosperous city must have looked
inviting to this overburdened caregiver. Pulmonary troubles and gastrointes-
tinal ailments were extremely common in his neighborhood. The high inci-
dence of childbed and infant mortality was disturbing to a man dedicated to
saving lives. Smallpox frequently reached epidemic proportions, killing some
and disfiguring others for life.
Boghurst took special note of a clustering of ills that were all identified by
their common symptom, a high fever. He knew the common fever well and
was an expert on the dangerous spotted fever (sometimes called jail feverbe-
cause it flared up in prisons and other crowded quarters).^7 He knew less about
malarial fever than did physicians with patients near the ditches north of the
city. However, he had firsthand knowledge of the worst kind of fever, plague.
Pestilential fever had continued to rage in the capital for a decade after
London’s last Great Plague in 1636 , but with fatalities steadily decreasing
Table 3.Greater London Bills of Mortality: Plague Burials,
May 2–June 13, 1665Number of Plague BurialsSt. Giles in Parishes inside All Number of Infected
Week the Fields the Walls Parishes Parishes
May 2–9 3 1 9 4
May 9–16 1 0 3 2
May 16–23 7 0 14 3
May 23–30 9 0 17 5
May 30–June 6 31 0 42 7
June 6–13 68 4 112 12