Signs and Sources• 67the infection when she visited the marketplace to purchase food, herbs for
medicines, and other “necessaries.” If she caught the distemper, her chances
of surviving were decreased by the weakened physical condition associated
with her pregnancy. Not surprisingly, in April and May of 1665 fatalities con-
nected with childbirth, listed as “abortive,” “childbed,” “stillborn,” and “in-
fant,” were 4. 7 times greater than in previous years. In addition, “teeth” (or
teething) of early childhood and the closely related “worms” claimed 1. 4
times more lives than in the recent past. (See appendix A.)
The shadow of plague was distorting normal patterns of mortality. Plague
was either the direct cause or a contributing factor for much of the increase
in deaths related to motherhood. And this was just the beginning of the epi-
demic. What might happen to expectant mothers and motherless infants
who remained in the city when death, unemployment, scarcity, and deserted
streets became the order of the day?
There was yet another concern about people’s health as plague entered the
nation’s capital. Out in Essex, whose farms fed Londoners, Ralph Josselin
prayed that “God good in outward mercies” would grant “a gallant seed time.
Lord remember us with rain.” In the fields surrounding the capital, there was
only a “little sprinkling shower or two,” Boghurst said, presaging “a pitiful
crop of hay.” With dearth might come death as city people’s ability to fight
off vagrant diseases wore thin. Famine, Dr. Hodges believed, greatly in-
creased mortality during pestilential contagions.^27
Even without the looming prospect of starvation, people were dying in
alarming numbers. There was only one explanation: a single disease, the
most horrifying, deadly, and mysterious of all illnesses known to this age, lay
behind most fatalities, and Londoners were learning to identify it. The
harder question was how to protect oneself from the infection. A wise person
would want to learn everything that was known about the propagation and
spread of the pestilential poison. This was not easy; the invisible poison left
no calling cards until it entered human bodies and the tokens, buboes, and
high fever appeared.
On the Nature of Causes
Diehard Puritans and a scattering of Anglicans, Catholics, and Quakers
thought God alone brought the plague as a judgment on a sinning people. If
a plague struck a community, these fervent believers called for repentance
and hoped that God would remove the Destroying Angel’s hand. For others,
this austere view was mixed with a varying degree of attention to natural
causes: God was the first or prime cause of plague, but He allowed it to come