DEDICATED TO Brendareeves
A Journal of the Plague Year
Observations or Memorials of the most remarkable occurrences which happened in London during the last great visitation in 1665, by Daniel Defoe.
A semi-plagiarized adaptation of this work by Daniel Defoe, written 356 years ago and not copyrighted in America
The Defoe original is a masterful manuscript of 95,000 words. I’m a patient reader, and I’ve read the story in its entirety. More than once, but not quite twice! Defoe was a careful observer, and what I’d call a citizen-scientist. He had to work extra-hard because his intense religious views made everything so damn complicated.
I’ve found in the past that authors who wrote in the seventeenth century tended to write some very long-winded stories. Almost always they contain a lot of tortured discussions of religion(s) and those discussions can be quite . . . confusing.
This is because authors almost always talk about their own God or church in contrast to those of others who obviously chose the wrong God or church. They also take the time to rip atheists or people who act like atheists. For me, an atheistic reader, I thus get to be doubly tortured. Why the hell do I read old PDFs on Gutenberg’s site?
I read these books partly because the authors wrote without a typewriter.
That makes the stories historical times two. I love pen and paper writing but of course the actual printed books have typeset text and I can’t say I’d want to read the original drafts. But these people can be great writers. Defoe is great.
What I’m looking to do today is explore the collision between science and religion in this text. This is a leitmotif in my life, and was in Blaise Pascal’s as well. Pascal’s problems with religion interfering in scientific pursuits were discussed in his writing in Pensées, written at about the same date Defoe wrote about the plague.
Here’s an example of Defoe’s writing — this paragraph was near the end of the book:
I cannot but with some wonder find some people, now the contagion is over, talk of its being an immediate stroke from Heaven, without the agency of means, having commission to strike this and that particular person, and none other — which I look upon with contempt as the effect of manifest ignorance and enthusiasm; likewise the opinion of others, who talk of infection being carried on by the air only, by carrying with it vast numbers of insects and invisible creatures, who enter into the body with the breath, or even at the pores with the air, and there generate or emit most acute poisons, or poisonous ovae or eggs, which mingle themselves with the blood, and so infect the body: a discourse full of learned simplicity, and manifested to be so by universal experience; but I shall say more to this case in its order. (That was one sentence!)
He occasionally comes close to thinking about the real source of the plague, which was thought to be rats and fleas until in this past decade we’ve learned that plague can be airborne and can infect cats and then humans.
The following is part of government orders there in London:
ORDERS FOR CLEANSING AND KEEPING OF THE STREETS SWEPT
‘That the sweeping and filth of houses be daily carried away by the rakers, and that the raker shall give notice of his coming by the blowing of a horn, as hitherto hath been done.’
‘That no hogs, dogs, or cats, or tame pigeons, or ponies, be suffered to be kept within any part of the city, or any swine to be or stray in the streets or lanes, but that such swine be impounded by the beadle or any other officer, and the owner punished according to Act of Common Council, and that the dogs be killed by the dog-killers appointed for that purpose.’
These actions came very close to something you’d do if you suspected fleas to be the vectors. I can’t avoid thinking that during the covid pandemic the dogs and cats have been multiplying in the US and in Panama, and to me that has seemed quite foolish. I mean because animals, mammals, are known to be vectors for coronaviruses. Ultimately humans get covid from airborne virions and perhaps most black plague was spread by airborne bacteria.
Now I just need one or two quotes so you can see the confusion religious thinking and talking creates:
I would be glad if I could close the account of this melancholy year with some particular examples historically; I mean of the thankfulness to God, our preserver, for our being delivered from this dreadful calamity. Certainly the circumstance of the deliverance, as well as the terrible enemy we were delivered from, called upon the whole nation for it. The circumstances of the deliverance were indeed very remarkable, as I have in part mentioned already, and particularly the dreadful condition which we were all in when we were to the surprise of the whole town made joyful with the hope of a stop of the infection.
Nothing but the immediate finger of God, nothing but omnipotent power, could have done it. The contagion despised all medicine; death raged in every corner; and had it gone on as it did then, a few weeks more would have cleared the town of all, and everything that had a soul. Men everywhere began to despair; every heart failed them for fear; people were made desperate through the anguish of their souls, and the terrors of death sat in the very faces and countenances of the people.
In that very moment when we might very well say, ‘Vain was the help of man’, — I say, in that very moment it pleased God, with a most agreeable surprise, to cause the fury of it to abate, even of itself; and the malignity declining, as I have said, though infinite numbers were sick, yet fewer died, and the very first weeks’ bill decreased 1843; a vast number indeed!
Also:
Nor was this by any new medicine found out, or new method of cure discovered, or by any experience in the operation which the physicians or surgeons attained to; but it was evidently from the secret invisible hand of Him that had at first sent this disease as a judgement upon us; and let the atheistic part of mankind call my saying what they please, it is no enthusiasm; it was acknowledged at that time by all mankind. The disease was enervated and its malignity spent; and let it proceed from whencesoever it will, let the philosophers search for reasons in nature to account for it by, and labour as much as they will to lessen the debt they owe to their Maker, those physicians who had the least share of religion in them were obliged to acknowledge that it was all supernatural, that it was extraordinary, and that no account could be given of it.
And:
The Government encouraged their devotion, and appointed public prayers and days of fasting and humiliation, to make public confession of sin and implore the mercy of God to avert the dreadful judgement which hung over their heads; and it is not to be expressed with what alacrity the people of all persuasions embraced the occasion; how they flocked to the churches and meetings, and they were all so thronged that there was often no coming near, no, not to the very doors of the largest churches. Also there were daily prayers appointed morning and evening at several churches, and days of private praying at other places; at all which the people attended, I say, with an uncommon devotion. Several private families also, as well of one opinion as of another, kept family fasts, to which they admitted their near relations only. So that, in a word, those people who were really serious and religious applied themselves in a truly Christian manner to the proper work of repentance and humiliation, as a Christian people ought to do.
There was also a conversation between Defoe and his brother. It was all pure religion talk, and I have to admit I couldn’t unravel the twists, so I haven’t included it here. Those were some convoluted and confusing sentences that I did put in this article.
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I don’t consider this to be a particularly good article. I try out new ground like this from time to time, and this one required a lot of reading and research.
Plus, the stories a writer considers to be turkeys sometimes are surprisingly well-received.
I’m publishing on Medium in part because I promised to dedicate it to Brendareeves, and partly because I still get recommendations from Medium’s A.I. shitware suggesting articles written by Christians. I’ve blocked them at times, but Christians are persistent pests. Jesus!
Thank you for reading, readers — even if you didn’t.
… Fred
