The Metropolis

Listing the symptons of London's 1665 plague, in the language of a contemporary doctor

Mike Pollitt | Wednesday 17 October, 2012 12:58

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FIRST, The manifest Signs of Infection

Horror
Vomiting
Delirium
Dizziness
Head-ach
Stupefaction.

SECONDLY, The Appearances after Infection

Fever
Watching
Palpitation of the Heart
Bleeding at Nose
a great Heat about the Precordia.

THE Signs more peculiar to a Pestilence, are those Pustules which the common People call:

Blains
Buboes
Carbuncles
Spots
and those Marks called Tokens.

The pestilential Poison might be shook…out of the Nerves into the Muscles, and there cause:

Tention
Trembling
Vellication
Yawning
Stretching
and all those other Concomitants of putrid and malignant Fevers.

Taken from the Loimologia of Nathaniel Hodges.

See also:

A story from Victorian London: Mary Rainbow and her nameless murdered child
The best pub names in London, ever
The best church names in London, and where they come from
Sketch of a deliciously gory medico-historical walk with Dr Richard Barnett, focusing on Samuel Pepys’s urethra

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