The plague was different. And the disease less virulent. But the fear – whether warranted in 2020 – was real in both times. And what we have in Daniel Defoe’s 1722 book is an account of a very real pandemic of bubonic plague in London in 1665.

Most books that are 300 years are hardly page turners. But what Daniel Defoe gives us in A Journal is a compelling story of the epidemic that swept through the city in the summer of that year. And worth your reading.

Because history well told gives us perspective that current events cannot provide. And the sometime hysteria of the past 18 months is a time in desperate need of perspective.

The title of this book and the writing style would lead you to believe that this is an account with by a contemporary who lived through the events.

Not so.

Not in the way we think of it, anyway. Because Defoe was only five years old when this particular epidemic hit London. So while he lived through this, it’s unlikely that he was aware of what was going on, except in a most cursory way.

Where do his details come from? He probably relied on an uncle he was close to, but that doesn’t explain it all. More likely, this involved conversations with older people he knew. And likely a fair amount of fictionalizing the events he’s describing. Yes, this book is parts journal, parts narrative, and parts good storytelling.

Which I normally distrust when dealing with historical events. This one I grudgingly accept, mostly because while what he recounts is at times horrifying, it’s not told in a sensationalistic way. Instead, much of what he tells is done in a fairly straightforward manner.

The plague was horrible by any standards, and it swept through various cities, regions, and countries many times through the middle ages. There were entire villages in France and Spain where everyone died, and roughly one third of Europe’s population was lost to this disease. It struck young people in a particularly awful way, and the resulting shortage of skilled workers in the 20s and 30s age range upended a lot of what was considered a normal economic system.

Why was it so bad? We don’t know. The disease is still with us, mostly endemic in rodent populations in Eastern Mongolia and the southwestern United States but treatment by antibiotics is pretty easy. In 1655 treatments were unavailable. The cause was unknown to them as well. They knew that contact with the sick was a problem, but the didn’t know why. So Defoe tells us how the sick were locked into their dwellings to keep them away from the well, and how merchants would have customers pay by putting their coins into a jar of vinegar. (Which was not a bad idea, since the acidity of the vinegar would help mitigate the effects of the microbes that spread the malady, microbes unknown and impossible to know in 1655).

We don’t even know how the disease progressed. Historians have often suggested that it came in fleas that in turn followed the horses of the Mongolian invaders who were frightening our European ancestors. (Interesting sidenote: most of us reading this probably have distant Mongolian ancestry. Genghis Khan alone had more than 100 children and Mongolia’s influence still pervades Europe in ways – especially linguistically – that we don’t realize).

The problem with the horse and flea theory of bubonic plague is that we have clear evidence that there were days when the plague was progressing more than 100 miles in a day. While that’s not impossible on horseback, the Mongols didn’t normally travel that fast, and it’s virtually impossible to maintain that speed for more than one day.

I say all of this to point out how devastating and widespread the effects and aftermath of the plague was at that time. But in a very real sense, Defoe’s book is a story of hope. Because in the midst of horrific disease, of men and women, children and their grandparents, rich and poor dying from this illness, there was and is still hope. Hope often in very ordinary ways. How priests and preachers continued ministering to the sick and dying, often at great personal risk. How friends and neighbors brought food and other provisions to those locked in their homes. How merchants continued to sell food and other goods instead of abandoning those dependent on them.

And then, the plague went away. Not all at once, but there was a lessening of cases, fewer deaths, and a few weeks after the numbers started to drop, it went away. We don’t know why it left, any more than we know why it came. The past is in a real sense a different world, one we cannot travel to, and can only see through limited eyes. Our time will one day seem that puzzling. But our ancestors went through this very hard time – a time insanely more difficult than our own – and made it through. We will, as well.