Note 203 — OF QUARANTINE, LAZARETTOS, AND OTHER ESTABLISHMENTS OF PLAGUE POLICE.

The following account is taken from Quincy: “Dr. Plott observes, the reasons why Oxford is now much more healthful than formerly, to be the enlargement of the city, whereby the inhabitants, who are not proportionally increased, are not so closely crowded together; and the care of the magistrates in keeping the streets clear from filth: for formerly, he says, they used to kill all manner of cattle within the walls, and suffer their dung and offals to lie in the streets. Moreover, about those times, the Isis and Cherwell, through the carelessness of the townsmen, being filled with mud, and the common shores by such means stopped, did cause the ascent of malignant vapours whenever there happened to be a flood. But since that, by the care and at the charge of Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, in the year 1517, those rivers were cleansed, and more trenches cut for the water’s free passage; the town has continued in a very healthful condition, and in a particular manner so free from pestilential diseases, that the sickness in 1665, which raged in most parts of the kingdom, never visited any person there, although the terms were there kept, and the Court and both houses of Parliament did there reside.”—Plott’s Hist. of Oxfordshire, chap. ii.