Reflections on Our Recent Visitation

One of the peculiar fancies I enjoy is medical history. Every couple of years I find myself rereading The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year and William Boghurst’s Loimographia, along with just about anything else that qualifies from that period. That last great outburst of bubonic plague in London in 1665 holds a special fascination. There are few historical comparisons to the sweeping natural evil that malady held, and reading the accounts is enough to chill the blood. Our ancestors were made of stern stuff, though they didn’t have a lot of choice. In an age where condition of life ranked just above subsistence for most, survival required the cultivation of a certain steeliness. Our language retains reference to that great terror; we avoid things like it, we bless one another when we sneeze, and even if ring-a-ring-a-rosie is now considered apocryphal, in the common imagination it retains its original frame of reference.

In one of London’s earlier…