A Visitation of the Plague

An excerpt from A Journal of the Plague Year.
This is historical fiction, written in 1772, with the plague of London happening 1665, when Dafoe was five years old, so this is not written from memory or experience. The excerpt seems well selected, but is more a collection of observations and anecdotes than a story. Perhaps the full novel picks up more of a narrative? The more interesting aspect of this book for me was the examination of the religious fervour that overtook the city during the worst months, the ‘snake-oil' sellers and conmen, as well as the physicians who no doubt believed they were doing their best to help.
A few of the printed bills amused:
An Italian gentlewoman just arrived from Naples, having a choice secret to prevent infection, which she found out by her great experience, and did wonderful cures with it in the late plague there, wherein there died 20,000 in one day.
and
An experienced physician, who has long studied the doctrine of antidotes against all types of poison and infection, has, after forty years' practice, arrived to such skill as may, with God's blessing, direct persons how to prevent their being touched by any contagious distemper whatsoever. He directs the poor gratis. except, of course, that the gratis direction is ‘buy my snake oil, and you shall be saved' or words to that effect...