The plague hit London in 1603, and of course writers and printers were not slow to take advantage of the market for information that would prevent or cure the plague. In a blackletter tract, a physician explains the sound principle that you should stay away from infected persons as much as possible. Meanwhile, you can prevent the infection by making the world around you smell better.
It is interesting to see that the standard proofreader’s marks have hardly changed at all in two centuries. From a printer’s guide published in 1825 comes a page of proofreading marks that would be perfectly understood at any large publication today.
Is journalism a good profession for an educated young man who finds himself in need of an income? Anyone can do it, says our anonymous author. But that is the difficulty: anyone can do it, so everyone does.
The Glorious Revolution had been accomplished; William and Mary were sharing the throne as England’s first and only joint monarchs. But the followers of the expelled James II had not given up. This broadside describes how treasonable letters might have been carried to their destination had it not been for the curiosity of a patriotic tradesman.
Pestilential diseases of all sorts are engendered by the close, fetid air of English dwellings, says a magazine writer of the 1830s. This is a fairly clear statement of the miasma theory of infection—which, in the absence of knowledge of bacteria and viruses, was a good approximation of the truth.