The Great Plague. The Story of London\'s Most Deadly Year

The Awakening • 261

immediate preservation of Almighty God.”^40 A physician who read all of Al-

bemarle’s reports on the Great Plague could not free his mind from the

thought of what might happen again: “In 1665 and 1666 there died about two

hundred thousand men, women and children of the pestilence, which was a

visitation beyond any formerly in this Nation; and I hope and pray that God

will never send the like, and that we nor our Posterity after us may never feel

such another judgment.”^41

Facing page

Fig. 15 .The General Bill of Mortality for 1665 , with a breakdown of burials by cause
as well as the total for all causes and the increase in burials from the previous year.
Note the suspiciously high number of fatalities attributed to ague and other fevers,
consumption, convulsion, dropsy, and stomach disorders (gripping of the guts, stop-
ping of the stomach, and surfeit) and the high mortality associated with childbirth
and infancy (childbed, chrisoms and infants, and teething and worms), which were
undoubtedly connected to the disease of plague and the disruption of living con-
ditions that it caused. More difficult to understand are the low counts of persons
found dead in the streets and fields and of deaths associated with emotional trauma
(distracted, suicide, grief, and lethargy). The minimal fatalities attributed to “overlaid
and starved” suggest that the searchers did not hear many stories of people starving to
death from lack of provisions.Guildhall Library, Corporation of London