See The Meditations of Daniel Defoe, ed. George Harris Healey (1946).

a Physician … Heath: Brayley and others identify him as Dr Nathaniel Hodges. See the first note to p. 29.

Plague … violent … where I liv’d: the Bills of Mortality reported 81 deaths from the Plague in H.F.’s parish of Aldgate in the first week of August, 173 in the following week.

Rozen and Pitch, Brimstone: such fumes were among the various recommendations of Necessary Directions … by the College of Physicians. Resin and pitch were ‘to be put upon Coals, and consumed with the least Flame that may be’, and brimstone, ‘though ill to be endured for the present’, should be ‘burned plentifully’—all for the purpose of correcting the air (p. 40).

Butchers of White-Chapel: Defoe came naturally to an interest in butchers: his father was a member of the Butchers’ Company and Defoe himself, by virtue of this fact, was admitted to freedom of the Company on 12 January 1688. Pepys wrote to Lady Carteret, 4 Sept. 1665: ‘The butchers are everywhere visited.’ Butcher’s Row and the Minories, the location of many butchers, were within a stone’s throw of Defoe’s parish church, St Botolph, Aldgate.

Vinegar: according to Thomas Phaer, A Treatise of the Plague, written about two hundred years ago. Republished with a Preface by a Physician of London (1722), ‘Vinegar is a noble thing in tyme of pestilence’ (p. 6). It was widely recommended as a prophylactic and a fumigant as early as the fifteenth century. In 1665 the College of Physicians commended it: ‘Vapours from Vinegar exhaled in any Room, may [correct the infectious air], especially after it hath been impregnated, by infusing or steeping it in any one or more of these Ingredients; Wormwood, Angelica, Master-wort, Bay-Leaves, Rosemary, Rue, Sage, Scordium, or Water-Germander, Valerium, or Setwall-Root, Zedoary, Camphire’ (Necessary Directions … by the College of Physicians, 40). But see Richard Boulton’s An Essay on the Plague (1721): vinegar ‘can only be serviceable, as it cools the Blood and may prevent a Ferment and Agitation by Heat; but if notwithstanding this Distemper should appear, it would but increase the Evil, by rendering the Blood more liable to Stagnation and Coagulation; yet it may be a good service to sprinkle the Rooms with it’ (p. 41). Defoe’s tradesman in Due Preparations (p. 61) purifies his letters by smoking them with brimstone and gunpowder, then sprinkling them with vinegar. Coins, too, were purified by immersion in vinegar. Kemp sings the praises of anti-pestilential vinegar and asserts that he wrote his Brief Treatise … of the Plague to demonstrate ‘the Vertue of Vinegar’ (p. 86).

dropt … Dead … knew nothing of it: Boghurst took exception to reports of sudden deaths: ‘none dyed suddenly as stricken with Lightning or an Apoplexy, as Authors write in severall countryes, and Dimerbrooke seems to believe it’ (Loimographia, 26). Diemerbroeck, in Several Choice Histories … of the Plague (1666) reports the instances of a man ‘taken with Feavor’ but who had ‘no outward Figure of the Plague, so that those of his house did not think he died of the Plague, but within twelve hours after he was put in the Coffin, they saw many black spots … in him, certain figures of the Plague’. He adds: ‘Sometimes the poison is so deadly, that they die before Nature can send forth any thing … neither Carbuncles nor Blaines, but after they are dead there appeareth black spots’ (p. 9). This appears to be an instance of septicaemic plague in which the blood-stream is heavily infected.

People … raving and distracted: cf. Vincent, God’s Terrible Voice in the City (1667): ‘some in their frenzy, rising out of their beds, and leaping about their rooms; others crying and roaring at their windows; some coming forth almost naked, and running into the streets; strange things have others spoken … one … burnt himself in his bed’ (1722 edn., 44).

tortured … Creatures: cf. Boghurst: ‘Many people by Launcing, Corrosives, actuall Cauteries, Scarifications, and many intollerable applications, put their patients to more paine than the disease did’ (Loimographia, 29).

Swellings … break and run: contemporary medicine stressed the necessity of drawing out the pestilential venom concentrated in the swellings symptomatic of bubonic plague. It was contended that this would relieve the pain and perhaps save the patient. Plague tracts, medical and lay, abounded in prescriptions to be taken internally or applied externally. Necessary Directions … by the College of Physicians declared that ‘the Swelling under the Ears, Armpits, or in the Groins … must be always drawn forth and ripened, and broke with all speed’. An expert chirurgeon was recommended, but for those not using a physician more than a dozen prescriptions were set down, including some remedies for ‘those that are delighted with Chymical Medicines only’ (pp. 54 ff.).

frightful Stories … of Nurses: from Dekker early in the seventeenth century to Hodges in 1665 and Mead in 1720, the brutality and wickedness of the nurse-keepers is a constant theme in plague tracts.