A few excerpts from Daniel Defoe's novel A Journal of the Plague Year on asymptomatic spreaders from a few different paragraphs; not in the same order as in the book… so I can append some photos of nude scenes involving wearing different kind of masks. Some for protection, some for fun.
Here also I ought to leave a farther remark for the use of posterity, concerning the manner of people's infecting one another; namely, that it was not the sick people only from whom the plague was immediately received by others that were sound, but the well. To explain myself : — by the sick people, I mean those who were known to be sick, had taken their beds, had been under cure, or had swellings and tumors upon them, and the like; these everybody could beware of, they were either in their beds, or in such condition as could not be concealed.
By the well, I mean such as had received the contagion, and had it really upon them, and in their blood, yet did not show the consequences of it in their countenances, nay, even were not sensible of it themselves, as many were not, for several days. These breathed death in every place and upon everybody who came near them; nay, their very clothes retained the infection, their hands would infect the things they touched, especially if they were warm and sweaty, and they were generally apt to sweat too.
Now it was impossible to know these people, they sometimes, as I have said, know themselves to be infected: these were the people that so often dropped down and fainted in the streets; for oftentimes they would go about the streets to the last, till on a sudden they would sweat, grow faint, sit down at a door, and die. It is true, finding themselves thus, they would struggle hard to get home to their own doors, or at other times would be just able to go into their houses, and die instantly; other times they would go about till they had the very tokens come out upon them, and yet not know it, and would die in an hour or two after they came home, but be well as long as they were abroad. These were the dangerous people : these were the people of whom the well people ought to have been afraid ; but then, on the other side, it was impossible to know them.
People have it when they know it not, and they likewise give it to others when they know not that they have it themselves. In this case, shutting up the well, or removing the sick, will not remove the danger, unless they can go back and shut up all those that the sick had conversed with, even before they knew themselves to be sick, and none knows how far to carry that back, or where to stop; for none knows when, or where, or how, they may have received the infection, or from whom.
But when the physicians assured us that the danger was as well from the sound, that is, the seemingly sound, as the sick: and that those people who thought themselves entirely free, were oftentimes the most fatal; and that it came to be generally understood that people were sensible of it, and of the reason of it ; then, I say, they began to be jealous of everybody, and a vast number of people locked themselves up, so as not to come abroad into any company at all, nor suffer any that had lo been abroad in promiscuous company to come into their houses, or near them : at least not so near them, as to be within the reach of their breath, or of any smell from them : and when they were obliged to converse at a distance with strangers, they would always have preservatives in their mouths, and about their clothes, to repel and keep off the infection.
But from the whole I found, that the nature of this contagion was such, that it was impossible to discover it at all, or to prevent its spreading from one to another, by any human skill.
This I take to be the reason which makes so many people talk of the air being corrupted and infected, and that they need not be cautious of whom they converse with, for that the contagion was in the air.
Here are some masked nude scenes, starting with
Rebecca Marshall from an episode of Party Down. You can find plenty more of such scenes at
Mr. Skin.