The court tarried until the
29th of June, and then left for Hampton, none too soon, for the
pestilence had reached almost to the palace gates. The queen
mother likewise departed, retiring into France; from which
country she never returned.
All through the latter part of May, and the whole of the
following month, this flight from the dread enemy of mankind
continued; presenting a melancholy spectacle to those who
remained, until at last the capital seemed veritably a city of
the dead. But for the credit of humanity be it stated, that not
all possessed of health and wealth abandoned the town. Prominent
amongst those who remained were the Duke of Albemarle, Lord
Craven, the lord mayor, Sir John Laurence, some of his aldermen,
and a goodly number of physicians, chirurgeons, and apothecaries,
all of whom by their skill or exertions sought to check the
hungry ravages of death. The offices which medical men
voluntarily performed during this period of dire affliction were
loathsome to a terrible degree. "I commonly dressed forty sores
in a day," says Dr. Boghurst, whose simple words convey a
forcible idea of his nobility; "held the pulse of patients
sweating in their beds half a quarter of an hour together; let
blood; administered clysters to the sick; held them up in their
beds to keep them from strangling and choking, half an hour
together commonly, and suffered their breathing in my face
several times when they were dying; eat and drank with them,
especially those that had sores; sat down by their bedsides and
upon their beds, discoursing with them an hour together.
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