Someday we'll look back on this extraordinary time, and perhaps the people who come after us may find it hard to believe...hard to believe we were so poorly prepared when we had ample warning that such a thing was likely sooner or later...hard to believe that our leaders dithered while people died...hard to believe that weeks before, the prime interest of much of the populace was the comings and goings of a forgotten family named Kardashian...
And they may wonder what it was like to live in this time, day-to-day.
Well, you're living through it, why not keep a journal of what's happening, how it affects your daily life, and your fears and hopes?
It could be a fascinating account for your children or grandchildren to read someday.
FOLLOW IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF DANIEL DEFOE
In 1721, Defoe wrote "A Journal of the Plague Year," about the events of the Year of the Great Plague in London. I'm running some excerpts of it on my Facebook page (sample below) but you may want to read the whole thing. It's available free to read or download at Project Gutenberg.
How People Found Out
"We had no such thing as printed newspapers in those days to spread rumours and reports of things, and to improve them by the invention of men, as I have lived to see practised since. But such things as these were gathered from the letters of merchants and others who corresponded abroad, and from them was handed about by word of mouth only; so that things did not spread instantly over the whole nation, as they do now. But it seems that the Government had a true account of it, and several councils were held about ways to prevent its coming over; but all was kept very private. Hence it was that this rumor died off again, and people began to forget it as a thing we were very little concerned in, and that we hoped was not true."
London Was Soon Changed
"The face of London was--now indeed strangely altered: I mean the whole mass of buildings, city, liberties, suburbs, Westminster, Southwark, and altogether; for as to the particular part called the city, or within the walls, that was not yet much infected. But in the whole the face of things, I say, was much altered; sorrow 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."
Physicians Could Not Heal Themselves
"I shall not be supposed to lessen the authority or capacity of the physicians when I say that the violence of the distemper, when it came to its extremity, was like the fire the next year. The fire, which consumed what the plague could not touch, defied all the application of remedies; the fire-engines were broken, the buckets thrown away, and the power of man was baffled and brought to an end. So the Plague defied all medicines; the very physicians were seized with it, with their preservatives in their mouths; and men went about prescribing to others and telling them what to do till the tokens were upon them, and they dropped down dead, destroyed by that very enemy they directed others to oppose. This was the case of several physicians, even some of them the most eminent, and of several of the most skilful surgeons. Abundance of quacks too died, who had the folly to trust to their own medicines."
Yes, everything old is new again, but there is hope for a different ending.
[image Creative Commons courtesy of National Portrait Gallery)
