And the Hello, welcome to the naked scientists with me, Chris Smith and also with

Ginny Smith. We're here at the Cambridge Science Center where we're recording back in time to explore the great plague and the fire that followed it, devastating London in the 17th century.

We'll be looking at the bug that caused the plague and how modern science has

allowed us to understand it better as well as asking whether we can learn

anything from history that could help us tackle the modern day plagues that still exist around the world.

During our time-travelling adventure we're going to be guided by the diaries of Samuel Peeps.

He was a Cambridge graduate actually who had a very important job overseeing provisions for the Royal Navy.

His diary show us firsthand what it was like to be alive in 17th century London,

and that's going to be read for us by Marcus Martin.

Picture the scene.

It's 1665 and London is a bustling, crowded metropolis.

The cobbled streets, slippery with animal dung and slops,

A narrow and full of people,

And the stench of rotten food and sewage fills the air.

Increasing numbers of people begin to fall ill with a disease known as the black death and feared above any other.

Peeps writes,

April 30th, 1665, great fears of sickness here in the city. It being said that two or three houses

are already shut up. God preserve us all. June 7th, 1665. This day, much against my

will, I did in Drury Lane see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors and Lord have mercy upon us writ there

Which was a sad sight to me being the first of that kind that to my remembrance I ever saw.

It put me into an ill conception of myself and my smell,

so that I was forced to buy some roll tobacco to smell and to chore,

...