Looking back at human history, plague is a major disaster juxtaposed with famine and war, and plagues such as the Black Death, smallpox, and plague have caused hundreds of millions of deaths, and historical tragedies have been staged many times.
The Great Plague of London is a song of sorrow in London.
The Great Plague of London was a large-scale infectious disease that broke out in London, England, between 1665 and 1666. Seventy-five thousand to one hundred thousand people lost their lives in the plague, more than one-fifth of London's population at the time.
It has historically been identified as lymphatic plague, which caused the large-scale Black Death, which was infected by humans with Yersinia pestis through fleas. The epidemic in 1665 was the last major outbreak of lymphadenism in England.
There are two theories about the source of the plague. One is said to have come from France, and in April 1665, two French seafarers passed out at the intersection of Trury Street and Longeck in London's West End, and the virus they carried later caused a widespread infection.
Another theory is that the plague virus came from the Netherlands, where the disease has been spreading since 1599. The first area hit by the plague was the Parish of St Giles in London.
It was not until the spring of 1665 that the plague spread rapidly on a large scale due to a massive increase in population and a sharp deterioration in sanitary conditions.
By July 1665, the plague had spread throughout the City of London. King Charles II and his family were the first to flee London for Oxfordshire.
Because the plague spread so quickly at that time, people had to seal the houses where the sick lived, and no one was allowed to enter or leave. Every day, only at a limited time, someone brings food and water from the window.
Thousands of patients died tragically in this terrible situation, and at most no fewer than 10,000 died in a week.
In early September 1665, the bustling city of London was completely transformed into a silent and dead city.
All the shops were closed, there were hardly any pedestrians on the street, and the side of the road was overgrown with lush weeds. The only work in the city that could break the silence from time to time was to transport corpses.
Initially, the burial was carried out only late at night, but the number of dead was too large to be carried out day and night. The bodies of the deceased were loaded horizontally and vertically into body carriers and transported to burial pits everywhere.
Records show that the death toll in London continued to rise from 1,000-2,000 per week to September 1665, when an average of 7,000 people died per week.
By late autumn, the situation was somewhat controlled. By February 1666, London was considered safe enough to welcome the king. At the same time, due to commercial exchanges with the European continent, the plague spread to France.
Thereafter until September 1666, the plague was still mildly prevalent. On 2 September 1666, London was struck by a fire, and many famous buildings, including St. Paul's Cathedral, were burned to the ground. But at the same time, most of the infected houses were burned down, and the plague situation finally improved.
Because of the lymphatic plague of 1665, after the epidemic, the British government began to vigorously improve the sanitary conditions in various regions, and the threat of plague never appeared on a large scale.
The crisis of survival forced people to move from ignorance to rationality in the prevention and control of the Black Death, and established and improved the modern public health system. In the process of the epidemic, London has prohibited assemblies, standardized management of funerals, and trade with epidemic areas during the epidemic period, and established a normative system responsible for isolation, quarantine, cleaning streets, and dredging waterways, which has curbed the rapid spread of the plague to a certain extent.
The city of London was then rebuilt on the basis of the fire and was reborn after the plague.
The London Plague Event was only one event experienced by the city of London. For London, one of the largest cities in the world since the 18th century, London is a kaleidoscope of history, culture and cityscape.
Samuel Johnson once said, "If you are tired of London, you are tired of life, because London has all that life has to offer."
Therefore, Matthew Green, a doctor of London history at Oxford University and historian, wrote such an immersive biography of the city's history, "Six Hundred Years of London".
In the book "Six Hundred Years of London", he relived a series of historical events such as the Great Plague, the Great Fire, the Theatrical Culture, the Rise of the News Industry, and the Bombing of World War II from six important periods in London's social history - the Medieval Period, Shakespeare Period, the Great Plague Period, the Georgian Period before the Industrial Revolution, the Victorian Period, the Great Bombing Period and the Post-War Recovery Period, and reproduced the ups and downs of the london megacity, the evolution of urban appearance and style culture.
Matthew Green did not start from the macro perspective of political era and dynastic change, but instead adopted a small and large approach, going deep into the micro level of history and magnifying the little-known details of historical events.
The history of the city is written by the lives of countless ordinary people. Then, the development of cities, the rise of social culture, the mutual shaping of cities and people, urban landscapes, ancient buildings, cultural customs, class conflicts, social problems, and so on, these details have become particularly important.
Like peeling an onion, it becomes intriguing to explore the details behind theaters, liquor stores, cafes, courts, prisons, lunatic asylums, and the streets of London.
Because this will not only let us feel the truth of history from the details, let us see the traces of London's years and heavy stories, and show us London's diversity, tolerance and contradictions.
"Six Hundred Years of London" records the city's appearance and social life in six periods of London, leading us to approach the city infinitely.
Today's London, shining with the development of the times, has also changed this era. The London of the past has not only made the london of the present, but also the current London is also influencing the current people's understanding of the London of the past.