A Collection of Very Valuable and Scarce Pieces relating to the Last Plague in the Year 1665 (1721)

Aug 12, 2015



An "all you need to know" about the 1665 Great Plague of London, this book consists of a compendium of official regulations that were put in practice in order to prevent the plague from spreading, accounts of the symptoms and cures related to the disease, as well as tables of data relating to number of deaths by cause and location. The year 1665 saw the last in a series of plague epidemics that had begun at the end of the fifteenth century. During The Great Plague, between 75,000 and 100,000 Londoners lost their lives with a peak of 7165 deaths occuring during one week in September. While the wealthier citizens fled to the countryside, the poor were left to fend for themselves, leaving them little chance as the households in which the plague occurred were sealed off in order to prevent the disease from spreading. The infected homes were marked with a red cross on the door as well as the words "Lord have mercy on us". In an attempt to prevent the plague from spreading, public spaces, such as theatres, were closed and it is estimated that 40,000 dogs and 200,000 cats were put to death as a result of the mistaken belief that they were carriers of the disease.