This is an excellent little book. In touching on the human condition, the fear of people in the Plague of 1665, one could not but think of the recent Covid Pandemic of 2019/2020 until 2021/2022. Here, though, Daniel Defoe writes of his being a Londoner staying in the capital through the time of the distemper, and tells of the attitudes of people and the fakery that abounded as people, particularly the poor, sought help as they, too, stayed put. Fake advice and fake remedies were many, swindlers having a hey-day until, of course, many of them died of the pestilence too. The Court moved away to Oxford and the wealthy were able to move to the countryside around London - the poor, though, had nowhere to go and died in their thousands - it is reckoned that over 68,000 died. This is but an extract from Defoe's "A Journal of the Plague Year" but it's an interesting taster - an excellent Penguin 60s Classic. ( )