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Nos. 56 & 58
while some were helped by bathing, others were harmed in no
less degree. And of those who received no care many died, but
others, contrary to reason, were saved. And again, methods of
treatment showed different results with different patients.
Indeed the whole matter may be stated thus, that no device was
discovered by man to save himself, so that either by taking
precautions he should not suffer, or that when the malady had
assailed him he should get the better of it; but suffering came
without warning and recovery was due to no external cause
. . . And at first the deaths were a little more than the normal,
then the mortality rose still higher, and afterwards the tale of
dead reached five thousand each day, and again it even came
to ten thousand and still more than that.”
(Procopius, History of the Wars 463-465 [H. B. Dewing, trans., Harvard University Press,
1914]).
“[S]orrow and sadness sat upon every face; and though some
parts were not yet overwhelmed, yet all looked deeply
concerned; and, as we saw it apparently coming on, so every
one looked on himself and his family as in the utmost danger.
Were it possible to represent those times exactly to those that
did not see them, and give the reader due ideas of the horror
that everywhere presented itself, it must make just impressions
upon their minds and fill them with surprise. [The city] might
well be said to be all in tears; the mourners did not go about
the streets indeed, for nobody put on black or made a formal
dress of mourning for their nearest friends; but the voice of
mourners was truly heard in the streets.”
(Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year 28 [1722]).
“The streets of New York City are so desolate now that you
half expect tumbleweed to blow along the pavement where cars
and cabs once clustered. There is barely a plane in the sky. You
hear the wheeze of an empty bus rounding a corner, the flutter
of pigeons on a fire escape, the wail of an ambulance. The
sirens are unnervingly frequent. But even on these sunny,
early-spring days there are few people in sight. For weeks, as
the distancing rules of the pandemic took hold, a gifted
saxophone player who stakes his corner outside a dress shop
on Broadway every morning was still there, playing ‘My
Favorite Things’ and ‘All the Things You Are.’ Now he is
gone, too.”
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