ABSTRACT
The physician Stephen Bradwell, writing during the 1625 outbreak of the plague, displays a certain level of resignation about his professional abilities: ‘I may not take upon me to cure the Sicke, because I meddle not with the Sicknesse (for to practise on the Plague now, would proue a plague to my Practise hereafter).’1 Noting its divine origin – ‘That It is immediately sent from God, it is evident by many proofes of holy Scripture’ – Bradwell concludes that, taking all things into account, the best option is to run as fast as possible:
Fly with speed from the infected place, lest by a little lingering, that infection (which you would leave behinde you) goe along with you … And flie not a little way, but many miles of, whither there is no probabilitie of common trading, or recourse of people from the place forsaken: and where there are high hills betwixt you and the infected coast … be not hasty to returne, so soone as you heare that the heat of the Contagion is abated; but keepe away as long as any signe of the Sicknesse remaineth … Let the space of three moneths passe upon the last infected person in that quarter whither you desire to resort.2
