1

A few words will tell you what sort of a Passage we had, and what situation we are in, and few they must be on account of the Quarantine, our Letters being liable to be opened for the purpose of fumigation at the Health Office.

    

2

To Sicknes, and to Queazie Tymes,

We drinke a health in wholesome Rymes,

Phisicke we invoke thy aide,

Thou (that borne in heauen) art made

A lackey to the meanest creature,

Mother of health; 

    

3

hookworm, influenza, jaundice, kidney stones,

leukaemia, malaria, neurosis, osteosclerosis,

plague, quarantine, rhinoviruses, sickle cell anaemia,

 

4

A new disease? I know not, new, or old, 

But it may well be call'd poore mortalls plague: 

For, like a pestilence, it doth infect 

The houses of the braine.

 

5

The Spring term in all boarding schools is usually marked by the outbreak of infectious diseases. Two oppressive weeks of Lent had crawled by when a child, having sickened for a day or so, retired to the infirmary, and was later observed, wrapped in blankets, being wheeled along the passage that led to the isolation wing. Spirits revived magically.

    

6

One Man, who may really have receiv’d the Infection, and knows it not, but goes Abroad, and about as a sound Person, may give the Plague to a thousand People, and they to greater Numbers in Proportion, and neither the Persons giving the Infection, or the Persons receiving it, know any thing of it, and perhaps not feel the Effects of it for several Days after.

 

7

Are not thy bills hung up as monuments, 

Whereby whole Cities have escaped the plague, 

And thousand desperate maladies been cured? 

 

8

And as dubious goods or letters are passed through an oven at quarantine sprinkled with aromatic vinegar, and then pronounced clean—many a lady whose reputation would be doubtful otherwise and liable to give infection, passes through the wholesome ordeal of the Royal presence, and issues from it free from all taint.

 

9

Each one of those foule-mouthed mangy dogs 

Gouernes a day, (no dog but hath his day) 

And all the daies by them so gouerned, 

The Dog-daies hight, infectious fosterers 

Of meteors from carrion that arise, 

And putrified bodies of dead men, 

Are they ingendred to that ougly shape, 

Being nought els but preseru'd corruption. 

T'is these that in the entrance of their raigne 

The plague and dangerous agues haue brought in. 

    

10

I’m dreaming of that work, Man Seated Reading

at a Table in a Lofty Room, and while I sleep

a virus sweeps the earth, and when I wake I see

the population of the world is

 

me.