Women, and that they die in the same proportion also; yet I have heard Physicians say, that they have two Women Patients to one Man, which Assertion seems very likely; for that Women have either the Green-sickness, or other like Distempers, are sick of Breedings, Abortions, Child-bearing, Sore-breasts, Whites, Obstructions, Fits of the Mother, and the like.
7. Now from this it should follow, that more Women should die than Men, if the number of Burials answered in proportion to that of Sicknesses: but this must be salved, either by the alleging, that the Physicians cure those Sicknesses, so as few more die than if none were sick; or else that Men, being more intemperate than Women, die as much by reason of their Vices, as Women do by the Infir-|68|mity of their Sex; and consequently, more Males being born than Females, more also die.
8. In the year 1642 many Males went out of London into the Wars then beginning, insomuch as I expected in the succeeding year 1643 to have found the Burials of Females to have exceeded those of Males, but no alteration appeared; forasmuch, as I suppose, Trading continuing the same in London, all those, who lost their Apprentices, had others out of the Country; and if any left their Trades and Shops, that others forthwith succeeded them: for, if employment for hands remain the same, no doubt but the number of them could not long continue in disproportion.
9. Another pregnant Argument to the same purpose (which hath already been touched on) is, That although in the very year of the Plague the Christenings decreased, by the dying and flying of Teeming-Women, yet the very next year after they increased somewhat, but the second after to as full a number as in the second year before the said Plague: for I say again, if there be encouragement for an hundred in London, that is, a Way how an hundred may live better than in the Country, and if there be void Housing there to receive |69| them, the evacuating of a fourth or third part of that number must soon be supplied out of the Country; so as the great Plague doth not lessen the Inhabitants of the City, but of
