Notes to Pages 140–148 • 325work we have seen on the intellectual milieu of medicine throughout the early modern
world and on plague. His analysis features a crucial issue neglected in historical litera-
ture: “whether it was thought possible that plague could be treated.” His answer, a
“qualified yes,” can be compared with our view of the doctors “stumbling” but striving.
Wear,Knowledge and Practice, 275 , 277.
6. Dekker had kinder words for the doctors’ performance in the epidemics of 1625
and 1630 , at least by comparison with empirics, whom he rated outright quacks. “Is
sickness [plague] come to thy doore?” he asked. “A Physitian is Gods second, and in a
duell or single fight (of this nature) will stand bravely to thee.” Thomas Dekker,London
Looke back at that Yeare of Yeares 1625 , and Looke Forward upon this Yeare 1630 (London,
1630 ); quotation in Wear,Knowledge and Practice, 33.
7. Hodges,Loimologia, 227.
8. Peter Barwick, London, to William Sancroft at the Rose and Crown, Tunbridge
Wells, Aug. 5 , 9 , 1665 , BL, Harleian MS 3785 , fols. 23 , 25.
9 .Intelligencer,July 31 , 1665.
10. Boghurst,Loimographia, 30.
11. In addition to older estimates, the reader can read with profit what Andrew Wear
says about medical professionals fleeing and staying in 1665. Wear,Knowledge and Prac-
tice, 337 – 38. T. D. Whittet,The Apothecaries in the Great Plague of London in 1665 (Lon-
don, 1965 ), 29 , estimated that about two hundred apothecaries were present at the peak
of the epidemic, half of them being mentioned “on numerous occasions.” His count
may be high, since some are mentioned in June and are heard of no more during the
epidemic, suggesting that they fled.
12. John Allin to Philip Fryth, Sept. 14 , 1665 , ESRO FRE 6566 ; Pepys,Diary, 6 : 268 ,
Oct. 16 , 1665.
13. Royal College of Physicians, MS 2298 ,Annals 4 : 131 ;Certain Necessary Directions,
item 1 ; CLRO, CA,Repertory, 70 , fols. 144 – 45 ; Ex GH, MS 270 , fol. 58.
14. See CLRO CA Repertory 7 , fol. 147.
15. CLRO, Ex GH, MS 270 , fol. 58.
16. Ibid.
17. Bell,The Great Plague, 88 ;Resolution of those Physicians presented by the College to
the... Mayor and Court of Aldermen... for the Prevention and Cure of the Plague, 2 August
(London, 1665 ), quoted by Cook,Decline of the Old Medical Regime, 157.
18. Boghurst,Loimographia, 60 , quoted by Wear,Knowledge and Practice, 338.
19. On the above appointments, see CLRO CA Repertory 70 , fol. 152 ; CLRO, Ex
GH, MS 270 , fol. 58 ; and the records of St. Margaret Westminster parish.
20. See Wear,Knowledge and Practice, 337 , and Bell,The Great Plague,using the index
listing of “Physicians who stayed in London.”
21. Slack,The Impact of Plague, 246.
22. Boghurst,Loimographia, 4.
23. Despite Charles II’s suspension of the London doctors’ “watch and ward” obliga-
tions, most of them failed to take the hint to use their free time for plague service. Col-
lege of Physicians, MS 2298 ,Annals, 4 : 132 , dated June 28 , 1665.