simplex of Sydenham, 680,
of Sibbald, 681,
perhaps epidemic roseola, 681 _note_,
Morton’s view of, 682,
anginosa at Edinburgh, 684,
at Plymouth, 684,
popular name of epidemic sore-throat, 687, 697, 701,
Cotton’s name for epidemic sore-throat in 1748, 698,
called miliary, 688, 703,
diagnosis from anomalous measles, 649, 705,
mild at Ipswich in 1771, 708,
anginosa in London in, 1777 708,
Withering on, 711,
Heberden on, 712 _note_,
Willan’s statistics 1786, 714,
Rumsey on, 715,
epidemic period 1796-1805, 719,
mildness of type 1805-31, 722-5,
modern statistics of, 726,
incidence on age and sex, 729,
range of fatality, 730,
fatalities at home and in hospital, 730,
alleged influence of drought, 731,
maximum in late autumn, 731,
question of miasma, 732,
uncertainty of its contagion, 733,
in children’s hospitals, 733,
from cows’ milk, 734,
as a septic disease, 735
Schacht, Lucas, fevers of Leyden, 332
Schultz, Simon, buying the smallpox, 473
=Scurvy=, supposed prevalence of on land in 17th cent., 1, 317, 319
Sedgley, cholera of 1832, 825
=Seven ill years=, fevers of in Scotland, 47-52
=Sewerage= of London 858,
of Lancashire towns, 209,
defects of in new mining townships, 220, 845
Shapter, Thomas, influenza contagious, 387,
Exeter, cholera in 1832, 829
Sharkey, Edmond, Asiatic cholera in 1837 at Berehaven, 834 _note_
Sheffield, vital statistics of 17th cent., 58,
epidemic sore-throat 18th cent., 696, 704,
diarrhoea during cholera, 842 _note_,
cholera in 1849, 848
=Ships=, cholera in, 826, 857,
fever in, _see_ Navy,
influenza in, 425-31
Short, Thomas, scarlatina in 1759, 704
Sibbald, Sir Robert, diseases of Scots 17th cent., 48,
bleeding in smallpox, 447,
scarlatina, 681
Simon, Sir John, inquiry on diphtheria, 739,
general principles of sanitation, 834,
report on Newcastle cholera in 1853, 849
=Simple continued fever=, a common form in the epidemic of 1817-19,
168-174,
relation of to relapsing fever, 177, 272,
in London 1826-28, 182,
in Bristol, 189 _note_, 176,
recent statistics of, 212, 216, 296
Simpson, Sir J. Y., cholera of 1832, 815 _note_
Simpson, William, choleraic season of 1678, 333
Sims, James, London typhus in 1786, 138,
Tyrone fevers 18th cent., 127, 246,
smallpox, 543,
London scarlatina in 1786, 713,
in 1798, 719
Skibbereen, dysentery in 1826, 273,
exports of food from, 280,
sicknesses of the great famine, 286, 287, 288
Slatholm, Dr, against blooding and cooling in smallpox, 447,
smallpox transferred to a sheep, 475
Sligo, cholera of 1832, 818
Sloane, Sir Hans, Jamaica earthquakes, 415,
procures account of inoculation, 465,
advises the king on same, 469
=Smallpox=, references to before 1660, 434,
after the Restoration, 437,
alleged increase of fatality, 439,
alleged mildness in infants, 441,
largely a disease of adults in 17th cent., 443,
the cooling regimen in, 445,
Morton on the causes of a severe type, 451,
marks of a recent epidemic visible, 454,
estimate of the numbers marked by in 17th cent., 455,
London deaths by from 1661 to 1700, 456,
in the country at end of 17th cent., 458,
death of Queen Mary from haemorrhagic form of, 458,
epidemic in 1710, 461,
a trouble in great houses, 462,
houses for, kept by nurses, 463,
at Boston, New England, in 1721, 485, 626,
at Charleston, 490,
hospital in London for, 505,
at Blandford, 513,
in the Foundling Hospital, 514,
table of epidemics of from 1721 to 1729, 518,
at Hertford in 1721, 519,
at Plymouth in 1724, 520,
at Aynho, 520,
at Hastings, 521,
at Nottingham, 522,
at Edinburgh 18th cent., 523,
at Northampton, 524,
at Boston, 525, 540,
at Kilmarnock, 526,
intervals between epidemics of, 527,
various epidemics 1751-53, 529,
London deaths 1721-60, 531,
weekly deaths in 1752, 532,
among London infants, 533,
London deaths 1761-1800, 535,
18th cent. statistics of Manchester, Liverpool, Chester, Carlisle and
Glasgow, 536-40,
in parishes of Scotland 18th cent., 541,
in Ireland, 543,
in the army and navy, 543,
wide range of fatality, 544,
comparison of epidemics at Chester and Warrington, 550,
summary of 18th cent. history, 556,
London deaths by from 1801 to 1837, 568,
Glasgow deaths 1801-1812, 569,
epidemic of 1817-19, 571,
the crystalline form of, 574-7,
at Norwich in 1819, 578,
in Christ’s Hospital, 581,
the epidemic of 1825-26, 593,
so-called “secondary,” 597,
a generation of in Glasgow, 597,
in Limerick 1830-40, 601,
the epidemic of 1837-40, 604,
legislation for in 1840, 606,
ages of at Paris and Glasgow compared, 611,
more adults attacked abroad than in Britain, 612,
London deaths by from 1837 to 1893, 613,
table for England, 614,
comparison of the epidemics of 1837-40 and 1871-72, 615,
has almost ceased in rural parts, 616,
London’s recent share of, 617,
recent rates of fatality from, 618,
in Ireland since 1864, 620,
in Scotland since 1855, 622,
varying ratios of children and adults attacked at various periods of
history, 622-7,
reason why fewer children attacked in epidemic of 1871-72, 627,
Watt’s doctrine of substitution applied to, 629
Smollett, Tobias, sick bay of the ‘Cumberland,’ 107 _note_
Snow, John, water-borne cholera, 852, 854
Southampton, a 17th cent, autopsy at, 316
Spalding, diphtheria, 739, 740
Spelman, Sir Henry, on burials, 37
=Spotted fever= in 17th and 18th cent., 13,
universal in 1623, 31,
cases in Archbishop’s family, 64,
Arbuthnot on, 67,
return of after 1831, 188, 277
Stark, James, sex-fatality in whooping-cough, 672 _note_
Stewart, Frances, her beauty after smallpox, 453
Stokes, William, Dublin enteric fever in 1826, 187 _note_
Story, Rev. George, camp sickness at Dundalk, 230-2
Stow, John, irregular building of London out-parishes, 85-6
Strabane, a congested district in 1817, 253,
fever and dysentery in, 259-60, 263,
smallpox in 1817, 573
Stranraer, smallpox in 1829, 600
Streater, Aaron, ague curer, 316
Streeten, R. J. N., influenza of 1837, 387 _note_
Strother, Edward, London fevers of 1727-29, 68-70
Stroud, tests of cowpox at, 565
Sturges, Octavius, whooping-cough mimetic, 677
Sudell, Nicholas, ague curer, 317
Sunderland, recent typhus in, 214, 217,
cholera begins at, in 1831, 796
=Surfeit=, meaning of, 775
Sutherland, John, reports on cholera of 1848-49, 837-8, 840
Sutton, Daniel, his method of inoculation, 498
=Sweat, the=, late reference to by Shakespeare, 311 _note_
Sweden, early statistics of whooping-cough, 670
Swift, Jonathan, urgent for quarantine, 58 _note_,
the stinks in his London lodging, 87,
state of Ireland in 1729, 238,
on an ague curer, 325
Sydenham, Thomas, on succession of epidemic types, 4, 631,
his epidemic constitutions, 9,
on intermittents, 11, 302, 314,
on comatose fever, 20,
on depuratory fever, 21,
on the “new fever” of 1685-6, 22, 24, 27,
his theory of subterranean miasmata, 29, 80,
a Scotch disciple of, 48,
on marsh agues, 302,
his position in the bark controversy, 320, 321-2,
on influenza of 1675, 327,
of 1679, 329,
on epidemic agues of 1678-80, 331,
his view of influenza, 399,
his practice in smallpox, 445,
smallpox most fatal to the rich, 450,
on measles in 1670 and 1674, 655,
on pertussis, 677,
on scarlatina, 680,
on diarrhoea in infants, 749,
on cholera nostras, 770,
on dysentery, 776
Symonds, John Addington, Bristol cholera in 1832, 828
Tain, cholera in 1832, 814
Talbor, Sir Richard, ague curer, 318,
his use of bark, 319, 322
=Tar-water=, in fever, 242,
in smallpox, 546
Taunton, dysentery in 1837, 790
Tavistock, cholera in 1849, 847
Tawton, North, epidemic fever of 1839, 196
Tees valley, enteric fever in, 221
Tewkesbury, burial in coffins, 36
Thackrah, Charles T., Leeds cholera nostras in 1825, 773
Theydon Bois, cholera in 1865, 857
Thompson, Theophilus, his ‘Annals of Influenza,’ 360 _note_
Thomson, John, smallpox of 1817-19, 575-6
Thoresby, Ralph, on influenza of 1675, 327,
loses his children by smallpox, 458
Thorne, Richard Thorne, diphtheria from cow’s milk, 745 _note_
Thorp, Dr, Leeds fevers in 1802, 160
=Throat distemper=, _see_ Scarlatina
Timoni, Emanuel, first writer on inoculation, 463,
visited by La Motraye, 472 _note_,
his inoculated daughter dies of smallpox, 488
Tiverton, fever of 1741, 80
Torbay, influenza on board ships in, 426
Torthorwald, 18th cent. fevers, 154,
vital statistics, 542
Torrington, strange experience of, in the influenza of 1782, 364
Toynbee, Arnold, the industrial revolution, 145
Tralee, typhus, 259,
cholera in 1849, 840
Trallianus, Alexander, dysenteria rheumatica, 782
Tranent, cholera in 1832, 806
=Transplantation= of disease, 474
Tristan d’Acunha, strangers’ colds, 431
Tronchin, Theodore, inoculation by blister, 493
Trotter, Thomas, ship fever, 117,
Northumberland fevers 18th cent., 156 _note_,
smallpox in the navy, 544
Turner, John, influenza of 1712, 340
Tullamore, panic at, from fever of 1817, 262
Tynemouth, cholera in 1849, 846,
in 1853, 850,
in 1854, 851
=Type, change of=, in continued fever, 2, 189, 203, 277,
in scarlatina, 724, 730
=Typhoid fever= _see_ Enteric
=Typhus=, _see_ also Simple Continued, Nervous, Putrid, Miliary,
Pestilential, War, Gaol, Ship and Workhouse fevers.
Perennial in London in 17th and 18th cent., 13, 67,
epidemic of 1685-6 identified as, 27,
the type of universal fever in 1623-4, 31,
corresponds to the malignant fever of 1694, 44,
among children at Bristol in 1696, 47,
in Scotland at end of 17th cent., 48, 49,
at Paris in 1700, 53,
a case in London in 1709, 53,
in Chester Castle in 1716, 60,
or _synochus_ at York in 1718, 63,
in 1728, 73,
at Plymouth in 1735, 77,
the type in the English epidemic of 1741-42, 83,
and in the Irish, 243,
circumstances of severe type of, 98-102, 290,
relation of to dysentery, 108, 231, 792,
in Lettsom’s dispensary practice, 136,
identified by Hunter in London with gaol or hospital fever, 138,
described by Sims in 1786, 138,
by Willan in 1799, 139,
by Currie at Liverpool, 141,
at Newcastle, 142, 156 _note_,
at Chester, 143,
at Leeds, 146, 160,
at Carlisle, 147,
at Manchester, 149, 157,
at Lancaster, 151,
at Whitehaven, 152,
in England generally 1782-85, 153,
in Scotland, 154, 161,
reference to by Robert Burns, 154 _note_,
epidemic of 1799-1802, 160,
in Ireland, 248,
epidemic of in fiction in 1811, 162 _note_,
decline of in second period of French war, 163, 167,
epidemic of 1817-19, in England, 168,
rare in the Scotch epidemic of same years, 175,
in the Irish epidemic, 258,
in Galway in 1822, 270,
the common type of continued fever from 1831 to 1848, 188-198,
the epidemic of 1847 in England, 205,
in Scotland, 208, 839 _note_,
in Ireland, 289-92,
of the Lancashire cotton famine, 209,
prevalence of relative to enteric, 211,
recent decrease of, 214, 606,
recent highest death-rates, 214, 217,
mistaken for typhoid, 214,
table of for Scotland, 216,
for Ireland, 296
Tyrone, over-population in, 254,
effects of the famine of 1817-19, 264
Ulverston, smallpox in 1816, 573
Uxbridge, measles in 1801, 649
=Vaccinal Syphilis=, real nature of, 562 _note_
=Vaccination=, rival of inoculation, 557,
its pathological nature, 559-562,
tests of its efficacy, 564,
approved by the State, 567,
extent of its practice to 1825, 582-6,
Gregory on the effect of upon the London smallpox of, 1825 595,
reasons for treating it as irrelevant to the epidemiology of smallpox,
596,
prejudices of working class against, 606-7,
made compulsory in 1853 on the precedent of 1840, 610,
of adults, or re-vaccination, common on the Continent sooner than in
Britain, 611-3
_see_ also Cowpox
=Vagrancy= in Irish famines, 244, 261, 267
“=Variolae Vaccinae=,” figurative name of cowpox, 563
=Ventilation= of gaols, 94,
of ships, 118.
_See_ also Window-tax.
Verdier, Jean, vaccination incorrect in principle, 587
=Vibrios= in cholera, 827 _note_
Virchow, Rudolph, dysentery and typhus, 108 _note_,
season of epidemic typhoid in Berlin, 217
Voltaire, M. de, his mythical account of inoculation in Circassia, 473
_note_
Wagstaffe, William, objects to inoculation, 478, 607
Wakefield, dysentery in asylum, 787
Wakley, James, carries Bill against inoculation, 607
Walker, George A., London graveyards, 87
Walker, John, “vaccinates” with smallpox, 590
Walker, Patrick, sickness in the seven ill years, 50,
epidemic agues in Scotland, 341
Wall, John, fever of 1741, 83,
epidemic sore-throat of 1748, 701-2,
relation of same to murrain, 736 _note_
Wall, Martin, Oxford typhus in 1785, 153
Walpole, Horace, on middle-class comfort, 60,
suffers from nervous fever, 71 _note_,
influenza of 1743, 350,
horse-cold of 1760, 355,
deaths by sore-throat in 1760, 703
=War typhus= at Chester in 1716, 60,
at Feckenheim in 1743, 108,
in 1746, 109,
at Paderborn in 1761, 110,
from Peninsular War, 166
Ward, T. Ogier, Wolverhampton cholera, 825
Ware, inoculation after an epidemic, 511
Warren, Dr, of Boston, two forms of influenza in successive seasons, 398
_note_
Warren, H., scarlatina anginosa in Barbados 1736, 684
Warrington, fevers at in 1773, 148,
smallpox in 1773, 537, 553,
comparison of with Chester as regards infant mortality, 551-5,
cholera of 1832, 829 _note_
=Water= from reservoirs, a source of enteric fever, 220 _note_, 221, and
_note_, 222 _note_,
a source of cholera, 832, 848,
at Newcastle in 1853, 550,
in London, 853, 859
=Water= from wells, a source of enteric fever, 219 _note_,
source of dysentery, 791,
source of cholera, 848,
the Broad St pump, 854,
Theydon Bois, 857
=Water= in the subsoil, relation to enteric fever, 217, 221,
Arbuthnot on its relation to influenza, 403-4, 408,
relation to scarlatina years or season, 731,
to diphtheria at Maidstone, 744,
to cholera at Bilston, 824, 830,
to cholera in east of London 1866, 859,
to cholera in the endemic area of Bengal, 861
Waterford, fever hospital founded in 1799, 249,
statistics of fever 1817-19, 266
Watson, Sir Thomas, epidemic fever of 1837-39 all typhus, 194,
“threw the agy off his stomach,” 318 _note_,
cause of intestinal irritation in scarlatina, 697 _note_,
rarity of dysentery, 790
Watson, Sir William, peeling of skin after influenza, 351,
inoculation trials at the Foundling, 500, 503,
smallpox in the Foundling, 514, 550,
putrid measles in same, 705,
dysentery in 1762, 779
Watt, Robert, Glasgow vital statistics, 539, 569, 654,
vaccination no direct effect on measles fatality, 583,
decline of smallpox, 597,
its place taken by measles, 629, 653-8,
statistics of whooping-cough, 675,
meaning of “bowel-hive,” 758 _note_
Watts, Giles, mildness of Sutton’s inoculation, 499
Webster, Noah, his theory of influenza, 405-7,
influenza of 1781 in America, 410,
influenza at sea, 428,
fatality of measles, 645,
insanitary state of American towns, 685,
angina of cats in Philadelphia &c., 719 _note_
West, Charles, nature of infantile remittent fever, 5,
exanthematic typhus, 189,
no enteric cases in 1837-8, 194
West Ham, diphtheria, 742
Wharekauri, strangers’ cold, 432
Whitaker, Tobias, smallpox more fatal after the Restoration, 439,
blooding in smallpox, 447,
prevention of pock-pits, 456
White, J., fevers in the navy 17th cent., 104
White, William, public health of York improves, 63
Whitehaven, gaol and ship fever, 114,
fevers, 152, 156,
few children die of them, 571,
fatality of smallpox, 538, 547,
vaccination supersedes inoculation, 582, 586,
cholera in 1832, 829
Whitmore, H., influenzas and agues of 1658-9, 313, 362,
opposes blooding in influenza, 381 _note_
=Whooping-cough= called “the kink” in medieval book, 666,
little regarded till 18th cent., 668,
apparent increase of London deaths, 669,
nosologically recognized in Sweden, 670,
various British statistics 18th cent., 670,
recent statistics, 671,
probable cause of higher fatality in females, 672,
now heads list of its class, 673,
as a sequel of other diseases, 674,
its pathology, 676,
partly contagious by mimicry, 677
Whytt, Robert, influenza of 1758, 353,
smallpox fatal in 1758, 547
Wick, cholera of 1832, 815
Wilde, Sir W. R., census of Ireland after the famine, 292
Willan, Robert, London typhus in 1796-99, 139,
agues, 373,
measles, 648,
18th cent. throat distempers all scarlatinal, 679, 737,
the Foundling epidemic of 1763, 705,
scarlatina of 1786, 713,
of 1796-1801, 719,
uncertainty of scarlatinal contagion, 733,
dysentery in 1800, 785
Williams, Robert, on 17th cent. agues and dysenteries in London, 304
_note_,
electrical theory of influenza, 406 _note_
Willis, Thomas, epidemic fever of 1661, 4-7,
cases and postmortem of, 6,
scale of malignity in fevers, 16,
epidemic agues of 1657-58, 314,
refers to bark in 1660, 320,
smallpox at Oxford in 1649 and 1654, 437,
less danger from smallpox in childhood, 441,
opinion on Duke of York’s children, 451,
whooping-cough left to nurses, 667,
convulsions, 749,
cholera nostras of 1670, 772,
symptoms of dysentery, 776
Wilson, Andrew, bilious colic, 771 _note_,
Newcastle dysentery, 780
=Window-tax=, effects of on health, 88,
history of, 88
Wintringham, Clifton, typhus in Yorkshire in 1718, 63,
nervous fevers, 72, 73,
agues, 341,
influenza of 1729, 345,
measles, 642,
angina and miliary fever, 683
Withering, William, describes scarlatina anginosa in 1778, 710-12
Witney, fever in 1818, 170
Wolverhampton, cholera in 1832, 825,
in 1849, 845
Woodward, John, treatment of smallpox, 449
Woodville, William, history of the Inoculation Hospital, 505,
value of inoculation, 516,
recent vaccination does not keep off smallpox, 565
Worcester, gaol typhus, 153,
epidemic sore-throat, 701,
infantile diarrhoea, 765-6
=Workhouses= fever in English, 47, 79, 126, 137, 154, 168;
established in Ireland, 267,
fever in, 286, 289, 293
Wordsworth, William, distress of 1794, 156
=Worm fever=, 7, 75, 111, 247
Worthing, enteric fever in 1893, 220
=Yellow fever= in the navy, 17th cent., 102
York, improved public health 18th cent., 63
Youghal, cholera in 1837, 835 _note_
Young, Arthur, prices and wages in 1801, 159,
potatoes in Ireland, 252,
potatoes as the English staple food, 284,
Warrington industry, 551
Ystradyfodwg, enteric fever, 220
Cambridge:
PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS,
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] James Lind, M.D., _Two Papers on Fevers and Infection_. Lond. 1763, p.
79.
[2] _Observations on Fevers and Febrifuges._ Made English from the French
of M. Spon. London, 1682.
[3] James Hutchinson, M.D., _De Mutatione Febrium e tempore Sydenhami,
etc._ Edin. 1782. Thesis.
[4] _Observationes Medicae_, 3rd ed. 1676, I. 2. § 23. English by R. G.
Latham, M.D.
[5] Reports of Whitehaven Dispensary (Dixon) and of Nottingham General
Hospital (Clarke), cited in the sequel.
[6] Rilliet, _De la Fièvre Typhoïde chez les Enfants_, Thèse, Paris, _2
Janv. 1840_, based on 61 cases; West, _Diseases of Infancy and Childhood_,
3rd ed. Lond. 1854.
[7] “Febris epidemicae cerebro et nervoso generi potissimum infestae, anno
1661 increbescentis descriptio,” in _Pathologia Cerebri_, Cap. VIII, “De
Spasmis universalibus qui in febribus malignis” etc., Eng. transl. p. 51.
[8] “Itaque ventrem inferiorem primo aperiens, viscera omnia in eo
contenta satis sana et sarte tecta inveni”--the small intestine being
telescoped in several places.
[9] Elsewhere he says the first case of the series was “circa solstitium
hyemale anno 1655.”
[10] _De Febribus_, chapter “De febribus pestilentibus.”
[11] _Treatise on the Infantile Remittent Fever._ London, 1782.
[12] _Pyretologia_, 2 vols. Lond. 1692-94, i. 68, at the end of “Synopsis
Febrium”:--“Febris verminosa, quae nulli e specibus memoratis praecisé
determinari potest.”
[13] Häser gives a reference to an essay in which Willis’s fever of 1661
is compared to enteric fever: C. M. W. Rietschel, _Epidemia anni 1661 a
Willisio et febris nervosa lenta ab Huxhamio descriptae, etc. cum typho
abdominali nostro tempore obvio comparantur_. Lips. 1861. Not having found
this essay, I cannot say on what grounds the comparison is made.
[14] _Lives of the Norths._ New ed. by Jessopp. 3 vols. 1890, iii. 8, 21.
[15] _Diary of John Evelyn, Esq., F.R.S., 1641-1706_, under the date of 18
Sept.
[16] _Diary of Samuel Pepys, Esq., F.R.S., 1659-69._
[17] An analysis of the four Hippocratic constitutions, with modern
illustrative cases, is given by Alfred Haviland, _Climate, Weather, and
Disease_. London, 1855.
[18] _Epist. I. Respons._ § 57. Greenhill’s ed. p. 298.
[19] Tillison to Sancroft, 14 Sept. 1665. Cited in former volume, p. 677:
“One week full of spots and tokens, and perhaps the succeeding bill none
at all.”
[20] H. Clutterbuck, M.D., _Obs. on the Epidemic Fevers prevailing in the
Metropolis_. Lond. 1819, pp. 58-60.
[21] Horace Walpole’s _Letters_ give two instances: he himself had never
set foot in Southwark; a small tradesman in the City had never heard of
Sir Robert Walpole.
[22] _Transactions of the College of Physicians_, iii. 366.
[23] Willis, Op. ed. 1682, Amstelod. p. 110. “De febribus pestilentibus”:
“Etenim vulgo notum est febres interdum populariter regnare, quae pro
symptomatum vehementia, summa aegrorum strage, et magna vi contagii,
pestilentiae vix cedant; quae tamen, quia putridarum typos innotantur, nec
adeo certo affectos interemunt aut alios inficiunt haud _pestis_ sed
diminutiori appellatione _febris pestilens_ nomen merentur. Praeter has
dantur alterius generis febres, quarum et pernicies et contagium se
remissius habent, quia tamen supra putridarum vires infestae sunt, et in
se aliquatenus τὸ θεῖον Hippocratis continere videntur, tenuiori adhuc
vocabulo _febres malignae_ appellantur.”
The war-typhus of 1643, which was sometimes bubonic, and was succeeded by
plague in 1644, is given as an example of _febris pestilens_; the epidemic
of 1661 as an example of _maligna_.
[24] _Pyretologia_, i. 68.
[25] C. L. Morley, _De morbo epidemico, in 1678-9, narratio_. Lond. 1680.
[26] Guido Fanois, _De morbo epidemico hactenus inaudito, praeterita
aestate anni 1669 Lugduni Batavorum vicinisque locis grassante_. Lugd.
Bat. 1671.
[27] Brownrigg cites the Leyden epidemic of 1669, which he calls an
intermitting fever, as an instance of the effects of changes in the ground
water; it was “powerfully aggravated by the mixture of salt water with the
stagnant water of the canals and ditches. This fever happened in the month
of August, 1669, and continued to the end of January, 1670.” “Observations
on the Means of Preventing Epidemic Fevers.” Printed in the _Literary Life
of W. Brownrigg, M.D., F.R.S._ By Joshua Dixon, Whitehaven, 1801.
[28] _Obs. Med._ 3rd ed., v. 2.
[29] _Epist. I. Respons._ §§ 56, 57.
[30] _Pyretologie_, i. 429.
[31] John Lamport _alias_ Lampard, _A direct Method of ordering and curing
People of that loathsome disease the Smallpox_. Lond. 1685, p. 28.
[32] _Hist. MSS. Com._ v. 186. Duke of Sutherland’s historical papers.
[33] _Schedula Monitoria I._ “De novae febris ingressu.” §§ 2, 3.
[34] _Ibid._ § 46.
[35] In the Belvoir Letters (_Hist. MSS. Com. Calendar_) Charles Bertie
writes from London to the Countess of Rutland, 26 January, 1685, that
“many are sick of pestilential fevers.” Evelyn says that the winter of
1685-6 was extraordinarily wet and mild, but does not mention sickness
until June, 1686, when the weather was hot and the camp at Hounslow Heath
was broken up owing to sickness.
[36] Evelyn’s _Diary_, which gives other particulars, including a
description of the ice-carnival on the Thames.
[37] Thomas Short, M.D. of Sheffield, _New Observations on City, Town and
Country Bills of Mortality_. London, 1750.
[38] Freind (_Nine Commentaries upon Fever, &c._, engl. by Dale, Lond.
1730, p. 4) has the following general criticism upon Sydenham’s varying
constitutions of fevers: “I believe also I may truly affirm that those
very fevers which Sydenham explains as distinct species, according to the
various temperature of the seasons, do not differ much from one another.
For, if perhaps you should except the _Petechiae_, they differ rather in
degree than in kind. There hardly ever appeared a fever in any season
where the signs so constantly answered one another, that those which you
found collected in one person should unite after the same manner in
another; however upon this account you would not deny their labouring
under the same distemper.”
[39] _Tractatus de Podagra_, § 35. Greenhill’s edition, p. 428.
[40] _Chronicle of Perth_ (Maitland Club) under date 14 Oct. 1621.
[41] Thorold Rogers, _Hist. of Agric. and Prices_, sub anno.
[42] _Extracts from Kirk Session Records._ Spalding Club, 1846.
[43] _Chronicle of Perth._
[44] _History of the Burgh of Dumfries._ By W. MacDowall. 2nd ed. Edin.
1873, p. 381.
[45] _Court and Times of James I._, ii. 331.
[46] _Ibid._, under date 25 Oct. 1423.
[47] _Ibid._, ii. 439.
[48] _Cal. Coke MSS._ (Hist. MSS. Com.) i. 158.
[49] _C. and T. James I._, ii. 469.
[50] Mayerne, _Opera Medica_, Lond. 1700.
[51] _Ibid._, ii. 473.
[52] Janus Chunradus Rhumelius, _Historia morbi, qui etc._ Norimb. 1625.
[53] W. D. Cooper, _Archæologia_, XXXVII. (1857) p. 1. I had overlooked
this important paper on English plagues in my former volume. The chief
additional facts that it contains are the very severe plague at Cambridge
in the summer of 1666, the deaths of 417 by plague at Peterborough in
1666, and of 8 more in the first quarter of 1667, and the slightness of
the Nottingham outbreak, which was in August, 1666 (p. 22).
[54] _London Gazette_, 17-21 June, 1675, repeated in the number for 28
June-1 July.
[55] Brand, _Hist. of Newcastle_, II. 509. Report contradicted on 18 Dec.
[56] “The habitations of the poor within or adjoining to the City,” says
Willan, “have suffered greatly; and some, I am informed, have been almost
depopulated, the infection having extended to every inmate. The rumour of
a plague was totally devoid of foundation.”
[57] Rudder, _A New History of Gloucestershire_, 1779, P. 737.
[58] Spelman, _De Sepultura_. English ed. 1641, p. 28. He cites the burial
fees paid to the parson as twice as much for coffined as for uncoffined
corpses. This agrees on the whole with the evidence adduced in the former
volume of this history, p. 335.
[59] 18 and 19 Car. II. cap. 4; 30 Car. II. (1), cap. 3. These Acts were
repealed by 54 Geo. III., cap. 108.
[60] _History of England_, I. 359.
[61] He has one or two relevant remarks: “But while we suppose common
worms in graves, ’tis not easy to find any there; few in churchyards above
a foot deep, fewer or none in churches, though in fresh-decayed bodies.
Teeth, bones, and hair give the most lasting defiance to corruption. In an
hydropsical body, ten years buried in the churchyard, we met with a fat
concretion [adipocere] where the nitre of the earth and the salt and
lixivious liquor of the body had coagulated large lumps of fat into the
consistence of the hardest Castille soap, whereof part remaineth with us.
The body of the Marquis of Dorset seemed sound and handsomely cereclothed,
that after seventy-eight years was found uncorrupted. Common tombs
preserve not beyond powder: a firmer consistence and compage of parts
might be expected from arefaction, deep burial, or charcoal.”
[62] One may allege poverty on general grounds, as well as on particular.
Thus, in 1636, the mayor was unpopular: “He was a stout man and had not
the love of the commons. He was cruel, and not pitying the poor, he caused
many dunghills to be carried away; but the cost was on the poor--it being
so hard times might well have been spared.” Ormerod, I. 203.
[63] Printed plague-bill, with MS. additions, Harl. MS. 1929.
[64] Haygarth, _Phil. Trans._, LXVIII. 139.
[65] Cotton Mather’s _Magnalia_. Ed. of 1853, I. 227.
[66] _History of England &c._, IV. 707. Evelyn (_Diary, 21 May, 1696_)
says the city was “very healthy,” although the summer was exceeding rainy,
cold and unseasonable.
[67] Thomas Dover, M.B., _The Ancient Physician’s Legacy_. London, 1732,
p. 98.
[68] Broadsheet in the British Museum Library.
[69] Tooke, _Hist. of Prices_, Introd.
[70] _Scotia Illustrata._ Edin. 1684. Lib. II. p. 52.
[71] Fynes Morryson, _Itinerary_, 1614. Pt. III. p. 156.
[72] Edinburgh, 1691, p. 67.
[73] _The Epilogue to the Five Papers, etc._ Edin. 1699, p. 22. This title
refers to a controversy on the use of antimonial emetics in fevers. See Dr
John Brown’s essay on Dr Andrew Brown, in his _Locke and Sydenham_, new
ed. Edinb., 1866.
[74] He adds that “the fever has several times before been in my family
and among my servants and children.” In mentioning the case of the Master
of Forbes in August, 1691, whom he cured, he remarks that “the malicious
said he was under no fever”; to disprove which Dr Brown refers to the
symptoms of frequent pulse, watching and raving, continual vomiting,
frequent fainting, and extreme weakness.
[75] Andrew Fletcher, _Two Discourses_. 1699.
[76] The English Government took off the Customs duty upon victual
imported from England to Scotland, and placed a bounty of 20_d._ per boll
upon it.
[77] Patrick Walker, _Some Remarkable Passages in the Life and Death of Mr
Daniel Cargill, &c._ Edinb. 1732. (Reprinted in _Biographia
Presbyteriana_. Edinb. 1827, II. 25.)
[78] Sir John Sinclair’s _Statistical Account of Scotland_. 1st ed. III.
62.
[79] _Ibid._ II. 544.
[80] _Ibid._ VI. 122.
[81] In the remote parish of Kilmuir, Skye, the famine is referred to the
year 1688, “when the poor actually perished on the highways for want of
aliment.” (_Ibid._ II. 551.) In Duthil and Rothimurchus, Invernessshire,
the famine is referred to 1680, “as nearly as can be recollected:” “A
famine in this and the neighbouring counties, of the most fatal
consequence. The poorer sort of people frequented the churchyard to pull a
mess of nettles, and frequently struggled about the prey, being the
earliest spring greens.... So many families perished from want that for
six miles in a well-inhabited extent, within the year there was not a
smoke remaining.” (_Ibid._ IV. 316.) In the Kirk session records of the
parish of Kiltearn, Rossshire, which I have seen in MS., there are various
entries in the year 1697 relating to badges of lead to be worn by those
licensed to beg from door to door: on 12 April, 34 such persons are named,
and on 19 April, Robert Douglas was reimbursed for the cost of 35 badges.
On 2 Aug., the number of poor who were to receive each from the heritors
ten shillings Scots reads like “nighentie foure.”
[82] John Freind, M.D., _Nine Commentaries on Fevers_, transl. by T. Dale.
London, 1730.
[83] _Cal. Coke MSS._ II. 405.
[84] Joannes Turner, _De Febre Britannica Anni 1712._ Lond. 1713, p. 3.
“Vere proximè elapso, per Gallias passim ingravescere coeperunt febres
mali moris in nobiles domos, et regiam praecipue infestae; quò Ludovicum
Magnum ipsa infortunia ostenderent Majorem, et patientia Christianissima
Maximum.”
[85] From London, on 25 February, 1701, we hear of the illness from a
violent fever of Mr Brotherton, at his house in Chancery Lane; he was
member for Newton, and Mr Coke was advised to look after his seat. A
letter of 18 April, 1701, from Chilcote, in Derbyshire, says that it has
been a sickly time in these parts and that a certain lady and her daughter
were both dead and to be buried the same day. In the same correspondence,
cases of fever in London are mentioned on 18 June and 4 December the same
year (1701). _Cal. Coke MSS._ II. 421, 424, 429, 441.
[86] _Tractatus Duplex._ Lond. 1710. Engl. transl. 1737, p. 253.
[87] W. Butter, M.D., _A Treatise on the Infantile Remittent Fever_. Lond.
1782.
[88] Philip Guide, M.D., _A Kind Warning to a Multitude of Patients daily
afflicted with different sorts of Fevers_. Lond. 1710.
[89] One death from “malignant fever,” two from scarlet fever.
[90] Hunter’s _Hallamshire_, ed. Gatty.
[91] Brand, _Hist. of Newcastle_, II. 308. Swift writes to Stella on 8
December, 1710: “We are terribly afraid of the plague; they say it is at
Newcastle. I begged Mr Harley [the Lord President] for the love of God to
take some care about it, or we are all ruined. There have been orders for
all ships from the Baltic to pass their quarantine before they land; but
they neglect it. You remember I have been afraid these two years.” The
orders referred to were probably the Order of Council of 9 Nov. 1710.
Parliament met on the 25th Nov. and passed the first Quarantine Act (9
Anne, cap. II.). Swift had a good deal to say with Ministers on many
subjects, and it is not impossible, however absurd, that his had been the
first suggestion to Harley of a quarantine law. I had purposed including a
history of quarantine in Britain, but can find no convenient context for
it. I shall therefore refer the reader to the historical sketch which I
have appended to the Article “Quarantine” in the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_, 9th ed.
[92] _Essay on Epidemic Diseases._ Dublin, 1734, p. 34.
[93] Dr Guide, a Frenchman, who had been in practice in London for many
years, says in his _Kind Warning to a Multitude of Patients daily
afflicted with different sorts of Fevers_ (1710) “the British physicians
and surgeons are lately fallen into an unhappy and terrible confusion and
mixture of honest and fraudulent pretenders.” Another writer of 1710, Dr
Lynn, quoted in the chapter on Smallpox, implies that physicians were
taking an unusually cynical view of their business. The most interesting
essay of the time on fevers is by J. White, M.D. (_De recta Sanguinis
Missione &c._ Lond. 1712), a Scot who had been in the Navy and afterwards
in practice at Lisbon; but it throws no light upon the London fevers.
[94] Elizabeth, Lady Otway, to Benj. Browne, Dec. 1st and 15th, 1715, and
Feb. 16, 1716. _Hist. MSS. Com._ X. pt. 4, p. 352; Hemingway’s _Hist. of
Chester_, II. 244.
[95] _Letters_, ed. Cunningham, I. 72.
[96] Lecky, _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, VI. 204:--“All
the evidence we possess concurs in showing that during the first
three-quarters of the century the position of the poorer agricultural
classes in England was singularly favourable. The price of wheat was both
low and steady. Wages, if they advanced slowly, appear to have commanded
an increased proportion of the necessaries of life, and there were all the
signs of growing material well-being. It was noticed that wheat bread, and
that made of the finest flour, which at the beginning of the period had
been confined to the upper and middle classes, had become before the close
of it over the greater part of England the universal food, and that the
consumption of cheese and butter in proportion to the population in many
districts almost trebled. Beef and mutton were eaten almost daily in
villages.”
[97] _Six Centuries of Work and Wages_, pp. 398-415.
[98] _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1766.
[99] Short.
[100] Clifton Wintringham, M.D., _Commentarium nosologicum, morbos
epidemicos et aeris variationes in urbe Eboracensi locisque vicinis ab
anno 1715 usque ad finem anni 1725 grassantes, complectens_. Londini,
1727.
[101] W. White, M.D., _Phil. Trans._ LXXII. (1782), p. 35. The annual
deaths under the old _régime_ exceeded by a good deal the annual births:
in the seven years 1728-35, according to the figures from the parish
registers in Drake’s _Eboracum_, the burials from all causes were 3488,
and the baptisms 2803, an annual excess of 98 deaths over the births in an
estimated population of 10,800 (birth-rate 37 per 1000, death-rate 46 per
1000). But in the seven years, 1770-76, the balance was the other way: the
population had increased by two thousand (to 12,800), and the births were
on an average 20 in the year more than the deaths (474 births, 454
deaths), the birth-rate being still 37 per 1000, and the death-rate fallen
to 35 per 1000. But the correctness of these rates depends on the
population being exactly given.
[102] “There has been very great mobbing by the weavers of this town, as
they pretend, because they are starved for want of trade; and they pull
the calico cloaths off women’s backs wherever they see them. The
Trainbands have been up since last Friday, and they were forced to fire at
the mobb in Moor Fields before they would disperse, and four or five were
shott and as many wounded.” (Benjamin Browne to his father, 16 June, 1719:
Mr Browne’s MSS. _Hist. MSS. Com._ X. pt. 4, p. 351.) The calicoes which
the London weavers tore from the backs of women were doubtless the Indian
fabrics brought home by the ships of the East India Company. These imports
were so injurious to home manufactures that an Act had been passed in 1700
prohibiting (with some exceptions) the use in England of printed or dyed
calicoes or any other printed or dyed cotton goods. This prohibition was
re-enacted in 1721, two years after the rioting at Moorfields. (7 Geo. I.
cap. 7). Blomefield (_Hist. of Norfolk_, III. 437) says that at Norwich
also there was tearing of calicoes, “as pernicious to the trade” of that
city. On the 20th of September, 1720, a great riot arose there, the rabble
cutting several gowns in pieces on women’s backs, entering shops to seize
all calicoes found there, beating the constables, and opposing the
sheriff’s power to such a degree that the company of artillery had to be
called out.
[103] Ambrose Warren to Sir P. Gell, 16 Sept. 1718, _Hist. MSS. Com._ IX.
pt. 2, p. 400 _b_.
[104] The sudden rise was due to influenza; but the fever mortality was
high for weeks before and after.
[105] John Arbuthnot, M.D., _Essay concerning the Effects of Air on Human
Bodies_. Lond. 1733, p. 187.
[106] Edward Strother, M.D., _Practical Observations on the Epidemical
Fever which hath reigned so violently these two years past and still rages
at the present time, with some incidental remarks shewing wherein this
fatal Distemper differs from Common fevers; and more particularly why the
Bark has so often failed: and methods prescribed to render its use more
effectual. In which is contained a very remarkable History of a Spotted
Fever._ London, 1729. This book was written before the influenza of the
end of 1729. At p. 126 the author was writing on the 24th of May, 1728.
The preface is undated.
[107] Bernard de Mandeville, M.D., _A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and
Hysteric Diseases_, 3rd ed. 1730, 1st ed. 1711. It contains nothing about
the “little fever.”
[108] Richard Blackmore, M.D., _A Discourse upon the Plague, with a
prefatory account of Malignant Fever_. London, 1721, p. 17.
[109] W. Cockburn, M.D., _Danger of improving Physick, with a brief
account of the present Epidemick Fever_. London, 1730.
[110] I am the more persuaded of the identity with relapsing fever of much
that was called remittent in Britain, and even intermittent, after reading
the highly original treatise by R. T. Lyons on _Relapsing or Famine
Fever_, London, 1872, relating to the epidemics of it in India.
[111] Huxham, _On Fevers_, chap. VIII.
[112] Murchison, _Continued Fevers of Great Britain_, 2nd ed. Lond. 1873,
p. 423.
[113] Sir Richard Manningham, Kt., M.D. _Febricula or Little Fever,
commonly called the Nervous or Hysteric Fever, the Fever on the Spirits,
Vapours, Hypo, or Spleen_. 1746.
[114] It is clear that the nervous fever established itself as a distinct
type in England in the earlier part of the 18th century, both in medical
opinion and in common acceptation: thus Horace Walpole, writing from
Arlington Street on 28 January, 1760, says: “I have had a nervous fever
these six or seven weeks every night, and have taken bark enough to have
made a rind for Daphne: nay, have even stayed at home two days.” _Letters
of Horace Walpole_, ed. Cunningham, iii. 281.
[115] _Commentar. Nosol._ u. s.
[116] William Hillary, M.D., “An Account of the principal variations of
the Weather and the concomitant Epidemical Diseases from 1726 to 1734 at
Ripon.” App. to _Essay on the Smallpox_, Lond. 1740.
[117] Brand, _History of Newcastle_, ii. 517, says that the magistrates of
that town made a collection for the relief of poor housekeepers in the
remarkably severe winter of 1728-29, the sum raised being £362. 18_s._
[118] Tooke, _History of Prices from 1793 to 1837_. Introd. chap. p. 40.
[119] _Ancient Physician’s Legacy._ Lond. 1733, p. 144.
[120] “In the year 1727,” says Hillary, “I ordered several persons to lose
120 to 140 ounces of blood at several times in these inflammatory
distempers, with great relief and success; whereas, in this winter [1728]
I met with few, and even the strong and robust, who could bear the loss of
above 40 or 50 ounces of blood, at three or four times; but, in general,
most of the sick could not bear bleeding oftener than twice, and then not
to exceed 30 or 34 oz. at most, at two or three times; and especially
those who had been afflicted with, and debilitated by, the intermitting
fever in the autumn before,--these could not bear blooding oftener than
once, or twice at most, and in very small quantities too, though the
acuteness of the pain, and the other symptoms in all, seemed at first to
indicate much larger evacuations that way; but the first bleeding often
sunk the pulse and strength of the patient so much that I durst not repeat
it more than once, and in some not at all.” Hillary, u. s. p. 26.
[121] _Edin. Med. Essays and Obs._ I-VI. This annual publication was the
original of the _Transactions_ of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
[122] _Ibid._ I. 40; II. 27; II. 287 (St Clair’s case); IV.
[123] Huxham, _De aere et morbis_.
[124] Ebenezer Gilchrist, M.D., “Essay on Nervous Fevers.” _Edin. Med.
Essays and Obs._ IV. 347, and VI. (or V. pt. 2), p. 505.
[125] _Ibid._ V. pt. 1, p. 30.
[126] _Obs. de aere et morbis_; also his essay _On Fevers_.
[127] Hillary, App. to _Smallpox_, 1740, pp. 57, 66.
[128] Mr Lecky (_History of England in the 18th Century_), II., says that
the famine and fever of 1740-41, which he describes as an important event
in the history of Ireland, “hardly excited any attention in England.” It
was severely felt, however, in England; and if it excited hardly any
attention, that must have been because there were so many superior
interests which were more engrossing than the state of the poor.
[129] _Gent. Magaz._ X. (1740), 32, 35. Blomefield, for Norwich, says that
many there would have perished in the winter of 1739-40 but for help from
their richer neighbours.
[130] W. Allen, _Landholder’s Companion_, 1734. Cited by Tooke.
[131] _An Inquiry into the Nature, Cause and Cure of the present Epidemic
Fever ... with the difference betwixt Nervous and Inflammatory Fevers, and
the Method of treating each_, 1742, p. 54.
[132] John Altree, _Gent. Magaz._ Dec. 1741, p. 655.
[133] White, _ibid._ 1742, p. 43.
[134] Dunsford, _Historical Memorials of Tiverton_. The accounts of the
great weaving towns of the South-west are not unpleasing until we come to
the time when they were overtaken by decay of work and distress, from
about 1720 onwards. The district, says Defoe, was “a rich enclosed
country, full of rivers and towns, and infinitely populous, in so much
that some of the market towns are equal to cities in bigness, and superior
to many of them in numbers of people.” Taunton had 1100 looms. Tiverton in
the seven years 1700-1706 had 331 marriages, 1116 baptisms, 1175 burials
(a slight excess), and an estimated population of 8693, which kept nearly
at that level for about twenty years longer (from 1720 to 1726 the
marriages were 284, the baptisms 1070 and the burials 1175).
[135] _Gent. Magaz._ XI. (1742), p. 704.
[136] Blomefield, _History of Norfolk_ III. 449.
[137] Arnot, _History of Edinburgh_, 1779, p. 211.
[138] _Gent. Magaz._ 1741, p. 705.
[139] _Edin. Med. Essays and Obs._ I. Art. 1.
[140] _Gent. Magaz._ 1742, p. 186.
[141] John Wall, M.D., _Medical Tracts_, Oxford, 1780, p. 337. See also
_Obs. on the Epid. Fever of 1741_, 3rd ed., by Daniel Cox, apothecary,
with cases.
[142] _Edin. Med. Essays and Obs._ VI. 539.
[143] “And here I cannot but observe how many ignorant conceited coxcombs
ride out, under a shew of business, with their lancet in their pocket, and
make diseases instead of curing them, drawing their weapon upon every
occasion, right or wrong, and upon every complaint cry out, ‘Egad! I must
have some of your blood,’ give the poor wretches a disease they never
might have had, drawing the blood and the purse, torment them in this
world,” etc.--_An Essay on the present Epidemic Fever_, Sherborne, 1741.
The practice of blood-letting in continued fevers received a check in the
second half of the 18th century, but it was still kept up in inflammatory
diseases or injuries. Even in the latter it was freely satirized by the
laity. When the surgeon in _Tom Jones_ complained bitterly that the
wounded hero would not be blooded though he was in a fever, the landlady
of the inn answered: “It is an eating fever, then, for he hath devoured
two swingeing buttered toasts this morning for breakfast.” “Very likely,”
says the doctor, “I have known people eat in a fever; and it is very
easily accounted for; because the acidity occasioned by the febrile matter
may stimulate the nerves of the diaphragm, and thereby occasion a craving
which will not be easily distinguishable from a natural appetite....
Indeed I think the gentleman in a very dangerous way, and, if he is not
blooded, I am afraid will die.”
[144] Munk, _Roll of the College of Physicians_, II. 53.
[145] _Gentleman’s Magaz._ III. 1733, Sept., p. 492.
[146] _Effects of Air on Human Bodies_, 1733, pp. 11, 17. His excellent
remarks on the need of fresh air in the treatment of fevers, two
generations before Lettsom carried out the practice, are at p. 54. The
curious calculation above cited was copied by Langrish, and usually passes
as his.
[147] “Also without the bars both sides of the street be pestered with
cottages and alleys even up to Whitechapel Church, and almost half a mile
beyond it, into the common field: all which ought to be open and free for
all men. But this common field, I say, being sometime the beauty of this
city on that part, is so encroached upon by building of filthy cottages,
and with other purprestures, enclosures and laystalls (notwithstanding all
proclamations and Acts of Parliament made to the contrary) that in some
places it scarce remaineth a sufficient highway for the meeting of
carriages and droves of cattle. Much less is there any fair, pleasant or
wholesome way for people to walk on foot, which is no small blemish to so
famous a city to have so unsavoury and unseemly an entrance or passage
thereunto.” Stow’s _Survey of London_, section on “Suburbs without the
Walls.”
[148] The line of an old field walk can still be followed from
Aldermanbury Postern to Hackney, Goldsmiths’ Row being one of the wider
sections of it.
[149] Luttrell’s _Diary_ 10 June, 1684.
[150] Roger North’s “Autobiography,” in _Lives of the Norths_, new ed. 3
vols., 1890, III. 54.
[151] Willan, 1801: “The passage filled with putrid excremental or other
abominable effluvia from a vault at the bottom of the staircase.” See also
Clutterbuck, _Epid. Fever at present prevailing_. Lond. 1819, p. 60.
Ferriar, of Manchester, writing of the class of houses most apt to harbour
the contagion of typhus, says, “Of the new buildings I have found those
most apt to nurse it which are added in a slight manner to the back part
of a row, and exposed to the effluvia of the privies.”
[152] C. Davenant to T. Coke, London, 14 Dec. 1700. _Cal. Coke MSS._, II.
411, “I heartily commiserate your sad condition to be in the country these
bad weeks; but I fancy you will find Derbyshire more pleasant even in
winter than the House of Commons will be in a summer season. For, though
it be now sixteen years ago [1685], I still bear in memory the evil smells
descending from the small apartments adjoining to the Speaker’s Chamber,
which came down into the House with irresistible force when the weather is
hot.”
[153] _Report on the Diseases in London, 1796-1800._ Lond. 1801.
[154] John Ferriar, M.D., _Medical Histories and Reflections_. London
1810, II. 217.
[155] Heysham, _Jail Fever at Carlisle in 1781_. Lond. 1782, p. 33.
[156] John Howard, _State of the Prisons_.
[157] _Notes and Queries_, 4th ser. XII. 346. Jenkinson, who was a
Minister under George II., was reputed to have set an example of stopping
up windows in his mansion near Croydon:
You e’en shut out the light of day
To save a paltry shilling.
Others had boards painted to look like brickwork, which could be used to
cover up windows at pleasure.
[158] Petition, undated, but placed in a collection in the British Museum
among broadsides of the years 1696-1700. In 1725 the imprisoned debtors at
Liverpool petitioned Parliament for relief, alleging that they were
reduced to a starving condition, having only straw and water at the
courtesy of the serjeant. _Commons’ Journals_, XX. 375.
[159] _Commons’ Journals_, 20 March, 1728/29, 14 May, 1729, 24 March,
1729/30.
“Mrs Mary Trapps was prisoner in the Marshalsea and was put to lie in the
same bed with two other women, each of which paid 2_s._ 6_d._ per week
chamber rent; she fell ill and languished for a considerable time; and the
last three weeks grew so offensive that the others were hardly able to
bear the room; they frequently complained to the turnkeys and officers,
and desired to be removed; but all in vain. At last she smelt so strong
that the turnkey himself could not bear to come into the room to hear the
complaints of her bedfellows; and they were forced to lie with her on the
boards, till she died.”
[160] _Political State of Great Britain_, XXXIX. April, 1730, pp. 430-431,
448.
[161] _Gent. Magaz._, XX. 235. This authority is twenty years after the
event, the incident having been recalled in 1750, on the occasion of the
Old Bailey catastrophe.
[162] Huxham.
[163] See the former volume of this History, pp. 375-386.
[164] _A Report &c. and of other Crown Cases._ By Sir Michael Foster,
Knt., some time one of the Judges of the Court of King’s Bench. 2nd ed.
London, 1776, p. 74.
[165] The _Gentleman’s Magazine_ however says (1750, p. 235): “There being
a very cold and piercing east wind to attack the sweating persons when
they came out of court.”
[166] See Bancroft, _Essay on the Yellow Fever, with observations
concerning febrile contagion etc._ Lond. 1811.
[167] _Gent. Magaz._ 1750, p. 274: “Many families are retired into the
country, and near 12,000 houses empty”--an impossible number.
[168] Sir John Pringle, _Observations on the Nature and Cure of the
Hospital and Jayl Fever_. Letter to Mead, May 24. London, 1750.
[169] One of the cases was that of an apprentice: “Some of the journeymen
working in Newgate had forced him to go down into the great trunk of the
ventilator in order to bring up a wig which one of them had thrown into
it. As the machine was then working, he had been almost suffocated with
the stench before they could get him up.” Pringle, “Ventilation of
Newgate,” _Phil. Trans._ 1753, p. 42.
[170] Thomas Stibbs to Sir John Pringle, Jan. 25, 1753. _Ibid._ p. 54.
[171] “Ventilators some years since when first introduced, it was thought,
would prove an effectual remedy for and preservative against this
infection in jails; great expectations were formed of their benefit, but
several years’ experience must now have fully shewn that ventilators will
not remove infection from a jail.” Lind, _Means of Preserving the Health
of Seamen in the Royal Navy_. New ed. Lond. 1774, p. 29.
[172] J. C. Lettsom, M.D., _Medical Memoirs of the General Dispensary in
London, 1773-4_. Lond. 1774.
[173] _Gent. Magaz._ 1776, April 22. p. 187.
[174] Lind, _Two Papers on Fevers and Infection_. Lond. 1763. pp. 90, 106.
Many cases had buboes both in the groins and the armpits.
[175] Carmichael Smyth, _Description of the Jail Distemper among Spanish
Prisoners at Winchester_ in 1780. Lond. 1795.
[176] _Cal. Coke MSS._ Hist. MSS. Commiss. i. 218.
[177] _Med. Hist. and Reflect._ ut infra.
[178] The following case, which happened five or six years ago, shows
disparity of conditions in a twofold aspect. A lady from a city in the
north of Scotland travelled direct to Switzerland to reside for a few
weeks at one of the hotels in the High Alps. Within an hour or two of the
end of her journey she began to feel ill, and was confined to her room
from the time she entered the hotel. An English physician diagnosed the
effects of the sun; the German doctor of the place, from his reading only,
diagnosed typhus fever, which proved to be right, the patient dying with
the most pronounced signs of malignant typhus. An explanation of the
mystery was soon forthcoming. The lady had been a district visitor in an
old and poor part of the Scotch city; she had, in particular, visited in a
certain tenement-house in a court, from which half-a-dozen persons had
been admitted to the Infirmary with typhus (an unusual event) at the very
time when she was ill of it on the Swiss mountain.
[179] Blane, _Select Dissertations_. London, 1822, p. 1.
[180] Mather’s _Magnalia_. 2 vols. Hartford, 1853, i. 226 “Life of Sir
William Phipps.” “Whereof there died, ere they could reach Boston, as I
was told by Sir Francis Wheeler himself [‘but a few months ago’], no less
than 1300 sailors out of 21, and no less than 1800 soldiers out of 24.” He
had brought 1800 troops with him from England to Barbados in transports.
[181] Churchill’s Collection, VI. 173.
[182] W. Cockburn, M.D. _An Account of the Nature, Causes, Symptoms and
Cure of the Distempers that are incident to Seafaring People._ 3 Parts.
London, 1696-97.
[183] J. White, M.D. _De recta Sanguinis Missione, or, New and Exact
Observations of Fevers, in which Letting of Blood is shew’d to be the true
and solid Basis of their Cure, &c._ London, 1712. His chief point, that
the strongest and lustiest were most obnoxious to malignant fevers, had
been urged by Cockburn in 1696.
[184] Lind (_Two Papers on Fevers and Infection_, London, 1763, p. 113)
gives an instance where the poisonous effluvia of the ship’s well did not
spread through the ’tween decks: “The following accident happened lately
[written in 1761] in the Bay of Biscay. In a ship of 60 guns, by the
carpenter’s neglecting to turn the cock that freshens the bilge-water,
which had not been pumped out for some time, a large scum, as is usual, or
a thick tough film was collected a-top of it. The first man who went down
to break this scum in order to pump out the bilge-water was immediately
suffocated. The second suffered an instantaneous death in like manner. And
three others, who successively attempted the same business, narrowly
escaped with life: one of whom has never since perfectly recovered his
health. Yet that ship was at all times, both before and after this
accident, remarkably healthy.” It was the contention of Renwick, a naval
surgeon who wrote in 1794, that it was the stirring of the bilge-water in
being discharged from the ship’s well, or the adding of fresh water to the
foul, that caused the offensive emanations. “Hence the first cause of
febrile sickness in all ships recently commissioned.” Renwick made so much
of the foul bilge-water as a cause that he thought the fevers ought to be
termed “bilge-fevers.” _Letter to the Critical Reviewer_, p. 42.
[185] These particulars are not given in Freind’s special work on
Peterborough’s campaign, which deals only with the military and political
history, but in his _Nine Commentaries on Fever_ (Engl. ed. by Dale,
London, 1730), and in a Latin letter to Cockburn, dated Barcelona, 9 Sept.
1706, which was first printed in _Several Cases in Physic_. By Pierce Dod,
M.D. London, 1746.
[186] Smollett joined the ‘Cumberland’ as surgeon’s mate in 1740, before
she sailed with the fleet sent out under Vernon and others to Carthagena.
His account in _Roderick Random_ of the sick-bay of the ‘Thunder’ as she
lay at the Nore is doubtless veracious: “When I observed the situation of
the patients, I was much less surprised that people should die on board,
than that any sick person should recover. Here I saw about fifty miserable
distempered wretches, suspended in rows, so huddled one upon another that
not more than fourteen inches space was allowed for each with his bed and
bedding; and deprived of the light of the day, as well as of fresh air;
breathing nothing but a noisome atmosphere of the morbid steams exhaling
from their own excrements and diseased bodies, devoured with vermin
hatched in the filth that surrounded them, and destitute of every
convenience necessary for people in that helpless condition.” Chap. XXV.
He wrote a separate account of the fatal Carthagena expedition in a
compendium of voyages.
[187] Coxe’s _Life of Marlborough_. Bohn’s ed. I. 183.
[188] Grainger’s essay, _Historia febris anomalae Bataviae annorum, 1746,
1747, 1748, etc._ Edin. 1753, is chiefly occupied with an anomalous
“intermittent” or “remittent” fever with miliary eruption, and with
dysentery.
[189] For a full discussion of the relation of dysentery to typhus, see
Virchow, “Kriegstypus und Ruhr.” _Virchow’s Archiv_, Bd. LII. (1871), p.
1.
[190] Sir John Pringle, _Obs. on the Nature and Cure of Hospital and Jayl
Fever_, Lond. 1750 (Letter to Mead); and his _Obs. on Diseases of the
Army_, Lond. 1752 (fullest account).
[191] Pringle, _Diseases of the Army_, pp. 40-45.
[192] _Ibid._ p. 68.
[193] Donald Monro, M.D. _Diseases of British Military Hospitals in
Germany, from Jan. 1761 to the Return of the Troops to England in 1763._
Lond. 1764. The same campaign called forth also Dr Richard Brocklesby’s
_Œconomical and Medical Observations from 1758 to 1763 on Military
Hospitals and Camp Diseases etc._ London, 1764.
[194] _Essay on Preserving the Health of Seamen_, Lond. 1757; _Two papers
etc._ u. s.
[195] In 1755 a pestilential sickness raged in the North American fleet,
the ‘Torbay’ and ‘Munich’ being obliged to land their sick at Halifax.
[196] The _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for December, 1772 (p. 589), records the
following: “The bodies of two Dutchmen who were thrown overboard from a
Dutch East Indiaman, where a malignant fever raged, were cast up near the
Sally Port at Portsmouth; they were so offensive that it was with
difficulty that anyone could be got to bury them.”
[197] W. Brownrigg, M.D. _Considerations on preventing Pestilential
Contagion._ London, 1771, p. 36.
[198] Lind writes in his book on the Health of Seamen, “The sources of
infection to our armies and fleets are undoubtedly the jails: we can often
trace the importers of it directly from them. It often proves fatal in
impressing men on the hasty equipment of a fleet. The first English fleet
sent last war to America lost by it alone two thousand men.”
[199] R. Robertson, M.D. _Observations on Jail, Hospital or Ship Fever
from the 4th April, 1776, to the 30th April, 1789, made in various parts
of Europe and America and on the Intermediate Seas._ London, 1789. New
edition.
[200] Given by Blane in a Postscript to his paper “On the Comparative
Health of the British Navy, 1779-1814” in _Select Dissertations_, London,
1822, p. 62.
[201] Blane, u. s. p. 47, from information supplied by Dr John Lind, of
Haslar Hospital.
[202] _Diseases incident to Seamen_, p. 18.
[203] _Ibid._ p. 34.
[204] Trotter, _Medicina Nautica_, I. 61. His general abstracts of the
health of the fleet in the first years of the French War, 1794-96, give
many instances of ship-typhus.
[205] John Clark, M.D. _Observations on the Diseases which prevail in Long
Voyages to Hot Countries, &c._ London, 1773. 2nd ed. 2 vols., 1792.
John Lorimer, M.D., published in _Med. Facts and Observations_, VI. 211, a
“Return of the ships’ companies and military on board the ships of the H.
E. I. C. for the years 1792 and 1793.”
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
| | Outward voyages | Homeward voyages | |
| |-----------------|------------------| In port |
| | Crew | Military | Crew | Invalids | |
|----------------|------|----------|-------|----------|---------|
| Number of men | 2657 | 3919 | 2701 | 1075 | -- |
| Sick | 1253 | 1751 | 1058 | 282 | 1533 |
| Dead | 28 | 50 | 51 | 27 | 96 |
[206] _Reflections and Resolutions for the Gentlemen of Ireland_, p. 28.
Cited by Lecky.
[207] Sutton, “Changing Air in Ships,” _Phil. Trans._ XLII. 42; W. Watson,
M.D. _ibid._ p. 62; H. Ellis, _ibid._ XLVII. 211.
[208] _Ibid._ XLIX. 332, “Ventilation of a Transport.”
[209] _Ibid._ pp. 333, 339.
[210] Lind, _Essay on the Most Effectual Means of Preserving the Health of
Seamen in the Royal Navy_. New Ed. London, 1774, p. 29.
[211] Blane, _Diseases incident to Seamen_, 1785, p. 243.
[212] _Id._ “On the Comparative Health of the British Navy from the year
1799 to the year 1814, with Proposals for its farther Improvement.”
_Select Dissertations_, 1822, p. 1.
[213] Le Cat, _Phil. Trans._ XLIX. 49.
[214] “Its cause seemed to be something contagious mixed with the contents
of the stomach and intestines, especially the bile and alvine faeces,
which absorbed thence contaminates the whole body and affects especially
the cerebral functions.” _Gent. Magaz._, Article signed “S,” 1755, p. 151.
[215] James Johnstone, M.D., senior, _Malignant Epidemic Fever of 1756_.
London, 1758.
[216] Nash, _Hist. of Worcestershire_, II. 39, found evidence in the
Kidderminster registers that the fevers of 1727, 1728 and 1729 had “very
much thinned the people, and terrified the inhabitants.” Watson, “On the
Medical Topography of Stourport,” _Trans. Proc. Med. Assoc._, II., had
heard or read somewhere that fever was so bad in Kidderminster in the
first part of the 18th century that farmers were afraid to come to market.
[217] Huxham, _Dissertation on the Malignant Ulcerous Sore-Throat_. Lond.
1757, p. 60.
[218] Tooke, _History of Prices_. Introduction.
[219] In Shrewsbury gaol, in 1756, thirty-seven colliers were confined for
rioting during the dearth. Four of them died in gaol, ten were condemned
to death, of whom two were executed. Phillips, _History of Shrewsbury_,
1779, p. 213.
[220] Johnstone, u. s. Short says: “a slow, malignant, putrid fever in
some parts of Yorkshire, Cheshire, Worcestershire and the low parts of
Leicestershire, which carried off very many.” In October, 1757, it set in
at Sheffield and raged all the winter.
[221] Short, _Increase and Decrease of Mankind in England, etc._ London,
1767, p. 109.
[222] Charles Bisset, _Essay on the Medical Constitution of Great
Britain_, 1 Jan. 1758, to Midsummer, 1760. Together with a narrative of
the Throat-Distemper and the Miliary Fever which were epidemical in the
Duchy of Cleveland in 1760. London, 1762, pp. 265, 270, &c.
[223] James Sims, M.D., _Obs. on Epid. Disorders_. Lond. 1773, p. 181.
[224] W. Hillary, M.D., _Changes of the Air and Concomitant Epid.
Disorders in Barbadoes_. 2nd ed., Lond. 1766.
[225] _Tractatus duplex de Praxeos Regulis et de Febre Miliari_, Lond.
1710. Engl. transl. of the latter, Lond. 1737.
[226] Ormerod, _Clin. Obs. on Continued Fever_. London, 1848.
[227] _Historia Febris Miliaris, et de Hemicrania Dissertatio._ Auctore
Joanne Fordyce, M.D., Londini, 1758. Symptoms at p. 16. In an Appendix Dr
Balguy makes the following curious division of the miliary vesicles: the
white in malignant continued fever, the dull red in remittent fever, the
“almost efflorescent” in intermittent. Fordyce makes them to appear as
early as the third day, and to begin to disappear in four or six days in
favourable cases.
[228] London, 1773, p. 9. See also Sir W. Fordyce’s essay of the same
year.
[229] John Moore, M.D., _Medical Sketches_, Lond. 1786. Part II. “On
Fevers.” Referring to the “putrid” fever in particular, he says that
certain unbelievers, of whom he was probably one, “assert that mankind are
tenacious of opinions, when once adopted, in proportion as they are
extraordinary, disagreeable and incredible.” Dr Moore is best known as the
author of _Zeluco_.
[230] Haygarth, _Phil. Trans._ LXIV. 73.
[231] Percival, _ibid._ LXIV. 59.
[232] Hutchinson, u. s.
[233] _Annual Register_, 1766, p. 220. The King’s Speech on 11 Nov. was
chiefly occupied with the dearth. The use of wheat for distilling was
prohibited by an order of Council of 16 Sept. 1766. _Gent. Magaz._ p. 399.
To show the hardships of the rural population at this time, Mr Gladstone,
in a speech at Hawarden in 1891, read the following words copied from a
stone set up in the park of Hawarden to commemorate the rebuilding of a
mill: “Trust in God for bread, and to the king for protection and justice.
This mill was built in the year 1767. Wheat was within this year at 9_s._,
and barley at 5_s._ 6_d._ a bushel. Luxury was at a great height, and
charity extensive, but the poor were starved, riotous, and hanged.”
[234] Lecky, III. 115.
[235] _Gent. Magaz._, series of letters by various hands in 1766. See also
a long essay in the _Annual Register_ for 1767 (then edited by Edmund
Burke), “On the Causes and Consequences of the present High Price of
Provisions,” p. 165. The evidence of a rise in the standard of living, in
the matter of dress and luxuries as well as of food, is equally clear from
Scotland in the articles written by the parish ministers for the
‘Statistical Account.’
[236] For a judicious estimate of the value of the Parish Clerks’ bills of
mortality see the elaborate paper by Dr William Ogle, _Journ. Statist.
Soc._ LV. (1892), 437.
[237] _Diseases of the Army._ New ed. 1775, pp. 334-5. Pringle admitted,
however, that “in some of the lowest, moistest and closest parts of the
town, and among the poorer people, spotted fevers and dysenteries are
still to be seen, which are seldom heard of among those of better rank
living in more airy situations.”
[238] _Medical Sketches_, Lond. 1786, p. 464.
[239] Lecky, _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, II. 636,
generalizes the facts as follows: “The wealthy employer ceased to live
among his people; the quarters of the rich and of the poor became more
distant, and every great city soon presented those sharp divisions of
classes and districts in which the political observer discovers one of the
most dangerous symptoms of revolution.”
[240] “This disease, as it appears in jails and hospitals, has been well
described by Sir John Pringle; and other authors have given accounts of it
on board of ships, especially crowded transports and prison-ships, but I
do not find that its originating in the families of the poor in great
cities during the winter has been taken notice of.” _Med. Trans. Coll.
Phys._ III. 345.
[241] He has been immortalised by Johnson’s verses:
“Well tried through many a varying year
See Levett to the grave descend,
Officious, innocent, sincere,
Of every friendless name the friend.
In misery’s darkest cavern known
His ready help was ever nigh;” etc.
[242] John Coakley Lettsom, M.D., _Medical Memoirs of the General
Dispensary in London, April 1773 to March 1774_. London, 1774.
[243] Nothing could be clearer than Dr John Arbuthnot’s reasoning and
advice on this matter half a century before.
[244] London, 1775.
[245] _Med. Trans. of the Coll. Phys. Lond._ III. (1785), 345:
“Observations on the Disease commonly called the Jail or Hospital Fever.”
By John Hunter, M.D., physician to the army.
[246] James Sims, M.D., “Scarlatina anginosa as it appeared in London in
1786,” _Mem. Med. Soc. Lond._ I. 414. Willan, who saw the same epidemic of
scarlatinal sore-throat in London in 1786, believed that the angina was
also “connected with a different species of contagion, namely, that of the
typhus or malignant fever originating in the habitations of the poor,
where no attention is paid to cleanliness and ventilation.” _Cutaneous
Diseases_, 1808, p. 333.
[247] The rumour of London fevers seems to have reached Barker, who kept
an epidemiological record at Coleshill. Referring to the winter of
1788-89, he says: “At this time there were dreadful fevers in London,
fatal to many, and a very infectious one in Coventry, of which many among
the poor died, most of them being delirious, and many phrenetical.”
[248] Robert Willan, M.D., _Reports on the Diseases of London,
particularly during the years 1796-97-98-99 and 1800_. London, 1801.
[249] He names specially some streets of St Giles’s parish, the courts and
alleys adjoining Liquorpond Street, Hog-Island, Turnmill Street, Saffron
Hill, Old Street, Whitecross Street, Golden Lane, the two Bricklanes,
Rosemary Lane, Petticoat Lane, Lower East Smithfield, some parts of Upper
Westminster, and several streets of Southwark, Rotherhithe, etc. “I
recollect a house in Wood’s Close, Clerkenwell, wherein the fomites of
fever were thus preserved for a series of years; at length an accidental
fire cleared away the nuisance. A house, notorious for dirt and infection,
near Clare-market, afforded a farther proof of negligence: it was
obstinately tenanted till the wall and floors, giving way in the night,
crushed to death the miserable inhabitants.”
[250] _Medical Reports on the Effects of Water, Cold and Warm, as a Remedy
in Fever and other Diseases._ 2nd ed., 1798. It need hardly be explained
that Dr Currie was competent on fevers, his use of the clinical
thermometer marking him as a man of precision. He is best known to the
laity as the biographer of Robert Burns and the generous helper of the
poet’s widow and family.
[251] “If it be supposed,” says Currie, “that some cases may be
denominated typhus by mistake, let it be considered how many cases of this
disease do not appear in the books of the Dispensary, though occurring
among the poor, being attended by the surgeons and apothecaries of the
Benefit Clubs to which they belong.”
[252] Moss (_A Familiar Medical Survey of Liverpool_, 1784), who had not
the same means of knowing the prevalence of typhus in Liverpool as Currie,
declares that “there has been but one instance of a _truly_ malignant
fever happening in the town for many years; it was in the autumn of 1781,
and appeared in Chorley Street, which is one of the narrowest and most
populous streets in the town, and nine died of it in one week; it was only
of short duration, and did not spread in any other part of the town.” He
admits that the habitations of the poorer class were confined, being
chiefly in cellars; yet the diet of the _sober_ and _industrious_ is
wholesome and sufficient, the comfortable artizans being ship-carpenters,
coopers, ropers and the like.
[253] John Clark, M.D., _Observations on the Diseases which prevail in
Long Voyages_, &c. 2nd ed., Lond. 1792; _Account of the Newcastle
Dispensary from its Commencement in 1777 to March 1789_, Newcastle, 1789;
and subsequent Annual Reports.
[254] Haygarth, _Phil. Trans._ LXIV. 67; Hemingway, _History of Chester_,
I. 344 _seq._
[255] Arnold Toynbee, _Lectures on the Industrial Revolution of the 18th
Century, etc._ London, 1884.
[256] Toynbee (u. s.) says of the time before the mills were built: “The
manufacturing population still lived to a very great extent in the
country. The artisan often had his small piece of land, which supplied him
with wholesome food and healthy recreation. His wages and employments too
were more regular. He was not subject to the uncertainties and knew
nothing of the fearful sufferings which his descendants were to endure
from commercial fluctuations, especially before the introduction of free
trade.”
[257] Percival, “Population of Manchester.” _Phil. Trans._ LXIV. 54.
[258] James Lucas, “Remarks on Febrile Contagion.” _London Medical
Journal_, X. 260.
[259] In Appendix to Hutchinson’s _Cumberland_, 1794. Reprinted in
Appendix to Joshua Milne’s _Valuation of Annuities_, Lond. 1815.
[260] John Heysham, M.D., _Account of the Jail Fever, or Typhus Carcerum,
as it appeared at Carlisle in 1781_. London, 1782.
[261] Aikin, _Phil. Trans._ LXIV. 473.
[262] John Aikin, M.D., _The Country from 30 to 40 miles round
Manchester_. Lond. 1795, p. 584.
[263] John Ferriar, M.D., _Medical Histories and Reflections_. 4 vols.,
1810-13, I. 172.
[264] Ferriar, I. 261.
[265] _Ibid._ I. 234.
[266] _Ibid._ II. 213-20.
[267] _Ibid._ I. 153-6; and II. 57.
[268] Ferriar, I. 166-8.
[269] This is perhaps the first numerical evidence of the slight fatality
of typhus in children. A more elaborate proof of the same was given long
after by Geary for Limerick. An early age-table for Whitehaven is given
under Smallpox, _infra_.
[270] David Campbell, M.D., _Observations on the Typhus or Low Contagious
Fever_. Lancaster, 1785.
[271] Joshua Dixon, M.D., _Annual Reports of the Whitehaven Dispensary,
1795 to 1805_. Details for 1773-4 in his note in _Memoirs of Lettsom_,
III. 353.
[272] Dixon, _Literary Life of Dr Brownrigg_, pp. 238-9.
[273] Aikin, _Country round Manchester_. Lond. 1795, p. 616.
[274] _Nature and Origin of the Contagion of Fevers._ Hull, 1788.
[275] _Account of a Contagious Fever at Aylesbury._ Aylesbury, 1785.
[276] Thomas Day, _Some Considerations ... on the Contagion in Maidstone
Jail_, 1785.
[277] See Barnes, in _Mem. Lit. Phil. Soc. Manchester_, II. 85. Dr Samuel
Parr wrote his epitaph in the Cathedral. Also Johnstone sen. to Lettsom,
_Memoirs_, III. 241.
[278] Martin Wall, M.D., _Clin. Obs. on the Use of Opium in Low Fevers and
in the Synochus_. Oxford, 1786.
[279] J. C. Jenner, in _Lond. Med. Journal_, VII. 163.
[280] _Gent. Magaz._ 1785, I. 231, March 1.
[281] This is the period and the district to which Robert Burns refers,
under date of 21 June, 1783, in a letter to his cousin, James Burness, of
Montrose: “I shall only trouble you with a few particulars relative to the
wretched state of this country. Our markets are exceedingly high, oatmeal
17_d._ and 18_d._ per boll, and not to be got even at that price. We have,
indeed, been pretty well supplied with quantities of white peas from
England and elsewhere; but that resource is likely to fail us, and what
will become of us then, particularly the very poorest sort, heaven only
knows.” The lately flourishing silk and carpet weaving had declined during
the American War, and the seasons had been adverse to farmers. The lines
in Burns’ poem, “Death and Dr Hornbook”:
‘This while ye hae been mony a gate
At mony a house.’
‘Ay, Ay,’ quoth he, and shook his head.--
are explained by a note, “An epidemical fever was then raging in the
country.”
[282] Account by Rev. Geo. Skene Keith, _Statist. Act._ II. 544.
[283] Also Banff, _ibid._ XX. 347.
[284]
“Not twenty years ago, but you I think
Can scarcely bear it now in mind, there came
Two blighting seasons, when the fields were left
With half a harvest. It pleased heaven to add
A worse affliction in the plague of war, &c.”
Trotter, _Medicina Nautica_, I. 182, 1797, gives these real
cases:--“During the short time that I attended the dispensary at
Newcastle, just at the beginning of the [French] war, I was sent for to a
poor man in a miserable and low part of the town called Sandgate. He was
ill with what is called a spotted fever.” Six children were standing round
his bed, the oldest not more than nine. They had been ill first, then his
wife, who was recovered and had gone out to pawn the last article they had
to buy meal for the children. The man worked on the quay at 1_s._ 2_d._
per diem. Again, “When I practised as a surgeon and apothecary at the end
of the late [American] war in a small town in Northumberland, with an
extensive country business, some similar scenes came under my view. Two
servants of two opulent farmers applied to me for relief. The first had
seven children, who took the fever one by one till the whole became sick.
His wages were 1_s._ per diem. His master, a rich man, thought himself
charitable by allowing them to pull turnips from his field for food. The
other servant was a shepherd; but his herding, as the saying is, was a
poor one. The first and second of six children were able to work a little,
till they got a fever in a severe winter, and down they fell, one after
another, the father and mother at last.” They wanted to sell the cow; but
some charitable ladies raised a small subscription, by which means the
comforts of wine and diet came within their reach; their master, for his
part, sent them the carcase of a sheep, which had been found dead in a
furrow, with a request that the skin should be returned.
[285] Jenner to Shrapnell, Baron’s _Life of Jenner_, I. 106-7.
[286] John Barker, _Epidemicks_, pp. 201-6.
[287] The dearth of 1794-95 called forth one notable piece, the ‘Thoughts
and Details on Scarcity,’ drawn up by Mr Burke, from his experience in
Buckinghamshire, originally for the use of Mr Pitt, in November, 1795.
Burke takes an optimist line, and preaches the economic doctrine of
_laissez faire_: “After all,” he asks, “have we not reason to be thankful
to the Giver of all good? In our history, and when ‘the labourer of
England is said to have been once happy,’ we find constantly, after
certain intervals, a period of real famine; by which a melancholy havock
was made among the human race. The price of provisions fluctuated
dreadfully, demonstrating a deficiency very different from the worst
failures of the present moment. Never, since I have known England, have I
known more than a comparative scarcity. The price of wheat, taking a
number of years together, has had no very considerable fluctuation, nor
has it risen exceedingly within this twelvemonth. Even now, I do not know
of one man, woman, or child, that has perished from famine; fewer, if any,
I believe, than in years of plenty, when such a thing may happen by
accident. This is owing to a care and superintendence of the poor, far
greater than any I remember.... Not only very few (I have observed that I
know of none though I live in a place [Beaconsfield] as poor as most) have
actually died of want, but we have seen no traces of those dreadful
exterminating epidemicks, which, in consequence of scanty and unwholesome
food, in former times not unfrequently wasted whole nations. Let us be
saved from too much wisdom of our own, and we shall do tolerably well.”
The last sentence is his favourite principle of “a wise and salutary
neglect” on the part of Government.
[288] A labourer at Bury St Edmunds, receiving a weekly wage of five
shillings, was able to buy therewith at the old prices:
Cost of same in 1801
£ _s._ _d._
{A bushel of wheat 0 16 0
{A bushel of malt 0 9 0
5_s._{A pound of butter 0 1 0
{A pound of cheese 0 0 4
{Tobacco, one penny 0 0 1
-----------
£1 6 5
{Weekly wage in 1801, 9_s._
{Parish bonus 6_s._ 15 0
----------
0 11 5 deficiency
[289] _Loidis and Elmete_, 1816, p. 85.
[290] Thorp, Tract of 1802, cited by Hunter, _Ed. Med. Surg. Journ._
April, 1819, p. 239.
[291] Currie, _Med. Phys. Journ._ X. 213.
[292] Beddoes.
[293] Goodwin, _Med. Phys. Journ._ IX. 509. Cf. Gervis, _Med. Chir.
Trans._ II. 236.
[294] Elizabeth Hamilton, _The Cottagers of Glenburnie_, Edin. 1808: “The
only precaution which the good people, who came to see him [the farmer]
appeared now to think necessary, was carefully to shut the door, which
usually stood open.... The prejudice against fresh air appeared to be
universal.... The doctor did not think it probable that he would live
above three days; but said, the only chance he had was in removing him
from that close box in which he was shut up, and admitting as much air as
possible into the apartment.... While the farmer yet hovered on the brink
of death, his wife and Robert, his second son, were both taken ill....
Peter MacGlashan had taken to his bed on going home and was now
dangerously ill of the fever.... All the village indeed offered their
services; and Mrs Mason, though she blamed the thoughtless custom of
crowding into a sick room, could not but admire the kindness and good
nature with which all the neighbours seemed to participate in the distress
of this afflicted family.”
[295] Charlotte Brontë’s story of _Shirley_ falls in this period and turns
upon the industrial crisis in Yorkshire; but it is on the whole a happy
idyllic picture. Harriet Martineau wrote in _Household Words_, vol. I.
1850, Nos. 9-12, a story entitled “The Sickness and Health of the People
of Bleaburn,” a Yorkshire village supposed to have been Osmotherly. It is,
in substance, an account of a terrible epidemic of fever in the year 1811,
the story opening with the news of the victory of Albuera and the
rejoicings thereon. It appears to have been constructed very closely from
the real events of the plague of 1665-66 in the village of Eyam, in the
North Peak of Derbyshire, and had probably a very slender foundation in
any facts of fever in Yorkshire or elsewhere in the year 1811. “Ten or
eleven corpses,” says the novelist, “were actually lying unburied,
infecting half-a-dozen cottages from this cause.” Cf. infra, Leyburn, p.
167.
[296] T. Bateman, M.D., _Reports on the Diseases of London ... from 1804
to 1816_. Lond. 1819.
[297] Parl. Committee’s Report on Contag. Fev. 1818, p. 33. Table by P. M.
Roget.
[298] Adam Hunter, _Ed. Med. Surg. Journ._, April, 1819.
[299] Cleland, _Glasgow and Clydesdale Statist. Soc. Transactions_, Pt. I.
Nov. 2, 1836.
[300] Sutton, _Account of a Remittent Fever among the Troops in this
Climate_. Canterbury, 1806.
[301] In the first three months of 1811 a singular fever occurred among
working people in part of a suburb of Paisley, one practitioner having 32
cases in 13 families. It was marked by rigors at the onset, pain in the
back, headache, dry skin, loaded very red tongue, quick fluttering pulse,
watchfulness, delirium-like fatuity, abdominal pain in many, foetid
stools, great prostration, gradual recovery after fifteen or sixteen days
without manifest crisis, and relapses in some. In this fever Murchison
discovers enteric or typhoid. Its limitation to a part of one of the
suburbs of Paisley is, of course, in the manner of enteric fever; on the
other hand, only one of those 32 cases died, which is a rate of fatality
perhaps not unparalleled in typhoid but much more often matched in typhus
or relapsing fever of young and old together; while the length of the
fever, fifteen or sixteen days or sometimes more, is too great for the
abortive kind of enteric and too little for enteric fever completing both
its first and second stages. James Muir, _Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ._
VIII. 134. Murchison, _Continued Fevers_, p. 428.
[302] James Clarke, M.D., “Medical Report for Nottingham from March 1807
to March 1808,” _Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ._ IV. 422. His account of the
unwholesome state of the weavers’ houses is as bad as any of those already
given.
[303] McGrigor, “Med. Hist. of British Armies in Peninsula,” _Med. Chir.
Trans._ VI. 381.
[304] Richard Hooper, “Account of the Sick landed from Corunna,” _Edin.
Med. and Surg. Journ._ V. (1809), p. 398. See also Sir James McGrigor,
_ibid._ VI. 19.
[305] James Johnson, _Influence of Tropical Climates_, p. 20.
[306] J. Terry, in _Ed. Med. and Surg. Journ._, Jan. 1820, p. 247.
[307] Bateman, _Account of the Contagious Fever of this Country_. Lond.
1818.
[308] The following from the “Observations on Prevailing Diseases,”
Oct.-Nov., 1818 (perhaps by Dr Copland), in the _London Medical
Repository_, X. 525, shows that the relapses in the earlier part of this
epidemic had been commonly remarked in London: “Fevers are still
prevalent.... Relapses have been noticed as of frequent occurrence in the
instances of the late epidemic. To what are these to be attributed? Are we
to ascribe them to the influence of the atmosphere, to anything in the
nature of the disorders themselves, or to the vigorous plans of treatment
which are adopted for their removal? These relapses are more common in
hospital than in private practice.... It has recently become the fashion
to consider the state of recovery from fever as one which will do better
without than with the interposition of the cinchona bark. Has the
prevalence of this negative practice anything to do with the admitted fact
of frequent relapse?”
[309] _Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on
Contagious Fever_, Parl. Papers, 1818.
[310] _On the Epidemic Fever at present prevailing._ Lond. 1819, p. 40.
[311] J. B. Sheppard, “Remarks on the prevailing Epidemic.” _Edin. Med.
Surg. Journ._, July 1819, p. 346. Also for Taplow, Roberts, _Lond. Med.
Repos._ XIV. 186.
[312] W. Hamilton, M.D., _Med. and Phys. Journ._, June 1817, p. 451.
[313] _Laws and Phenomena of Pestilence_, Lond. 1821, p. 39. Christison
says: “All great towns, with the exception it is said of Birmingham.”
[314] Adam Hunter, _Edin. Med. Surg. Journ._, Apr. 1819, p. 234, and Apr.
1820.
[315] Wood, “Cases of Typhus.” _Edin. Med. Surg. Journ._, April, 1819.
[316] Adam Hunter, u. s.
[317] T. Barnes, _Edin. Med. Surg. Journ._, April, 1819.
[318] H. Edmonston, _ibid._ XIV. (1818), p. 71.
[319] T. McWhirter, _ibid._ April, 1819, p. 317.
[320] J. C. Prichard, M.D., _History of the Epidemic Fever which prevailed
in Bristol, 1817-19_. Lond. 1820.
[321] _Obs. on the Cure and Prevention of the Contagious Fever now in
Edinburgh._ Edin. 1818.
[322] _Edin. Med. Surg. Journ._ XVI. 146.
[323] Benj. Welsh, _Efficacy of Bloodletting in the Epidemic Fever of
Edinburgh_. Edin. 1819.
[324] _Life of Sir Robert Christison_, Edin. 1885, I. 142:--“I had been
scarcely three weeks at my post in the fever hospital when I was attacked
suddenly--so suddenly, that in half-an-hour I was utterly helpless from
prostration. I had nearly six days of the primary attack, then a week of
comfort, repose and feebleness, and next the secondary attack, or relapse,
for three days more. My pulse rose to 160, and continued hard and
incompressible even at that rate. My temperature under the tongue was 107°
&c.” He was bled to 30 oz. and next day to 20 oz. more. Before the end of
the epidemic, in August, 1819, he had another attack of relapsing fever,
for which he was bled to 24 oz. and a third, after exposure to chill, the
same autumn, which last was a simple five-days’ fever without relapse,
also treated by the abstraction of 24 oz. of blood. In 1832 he had two
attacks of the same _synocha_ without relapses, and throughout the rest of
his life many more: e.g. 16 June, 1861, “I have had something like the
relapsing fever of my youth”--a five-days’ fever with a relapse on the
18th day; and again, on 19 March, 1868, “Incomprehensible return of mine
ancient enemy.” These experiences coloured Christison’s view of relapsing
fever, the so-called relapses being, in his opinion, comparable to the
returning paroxysms of ague.
[325] Cleland.
[326] Report signed A. Brebner, provost, printed in Harty, _Historic
Sketch of the Contagious Fever in Ireland, 1817-19_. Dublin, 1820,
Appendix, p. 110.
[327] _Memoir concerning the Typhus Fever in Aberdeen, 1818-19._ By George
Kerr, Aberdeen, 1820.
[328] William Gourlay, “History of the Epidemic Fever as it appeared in a
Country Parish in the North of Scotland.” _Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ._,
July, 1819, p. 329, dated 20 Nov. 1818.
[329] _Trans. K. and Q. Cal. Phys. Ireland_, V. 527.
[330] _Dub. Q. J. Med. Sc._ VIII. 297.
[331] A succession of thirty-one cases of relapsing typhoid at Charing
Cross Hospital in 1877-78 were made the subject of an able essay by J.
Pearson Irvine, M.D., _Relapse of Typhoid Fever_, London, 1880.
[332] Cited in Aberdeen Report, 17 Dec. 1818, in Harty, App. p. 110.
[333] _Report of Select Committee_, u. s. p. 6, and minutes of evidence.
[334] Prichard, pp. 74, 88.
[335] Christison, _Month. J. Med. Sc._ X.; Bennett, _Princip. and Pract.
of Med._ 944-5.
[336] See above, p. 110-11.
[337] A complementary measure, namely, notification of contagious sickness
to the authorities, was put in practice at Leeds in 1804 on the opening of
the House of Recovery there. The Leeds House of Recovery, with fifty beds,
was opened on 1 November, 1804, the epidemic of fever being then about
over. One of its officers was an inspector, whose duty was “to detect the
first appearance of infection, to cause the removal of the patient to the
House of Recovery, and to superintend the fumigating and whitewashing of
the apartment from which he is removed. So great is the solicitude of the
physicians to promote early removal that rewards are offered to such as
shall first give information of an infectious fever in their
neighbourhoods.” It was claimed that this had been a great success, Leeds
having been for twelve years previous to the epidemic of 1817 nearly
exempted from two of the most infectious and fatal diseases, namely,
typhus and scarlet fever. (It happened, however, that the whole of
England, Scotland and even Ireland were exempted to the same remarkable,
and of course gratifying degree.) Whitaker, _Loidis and Elmete_, 1816, p.
85.
[338] A strange epidemic of the early summer of 1824 in a semi-charitable
girls’ school at Cowan Bridge, between Leeds and Kendal, which is the
subject of a moving chapter in ‘Jane Eyre,’ was inquired into by Mrs
Gaskell, the biographer of Charlotte Brontë. Forty girls were attacked
with fever. A woman who was sent to nurse the sick, saw when she entered
the school-room from twelve to fifteen girls lying about, some resting
their heads on the table, others on the ground; all heavy-eyed and
flushed, indifferent and weary, with pains in every limb, the atmosphere
of the room having a peculiar odour. The symptoms, so far as known, and
the circumstances of the school, point more to relapsing fever than to
typhus, which is the name given to it by Charlotte Brontë. None died of
the fever (it is otherwise in the tale), but one girl died at home of its
after-effects. Dr Batty, of Kirby, who was called in, did not consider the
type of fever to be alarming or dangerous. The dietary of the school had
undoubtedly been most meagre for growing girls, and its discipline severe.
The house was old and unsuited for the purposes of a boarding-school.
[339] Cowan, _Journ. Statist. Soc._ III. (1840) p. 271; _Glas. Med.
Journ._ III. 437.
[340] Some of these were treated at the extra fever-hospital in Spring
Gardens.
[341] From the table by Christison, _Edin. Med. Journ._, Jan. 1858, p.
581.
[342] _Life of Christison_, “Autobiography.”
[343] John Burne, M.D., _Pract. Treatise on the Typhus or Adynamic Fever_.
London, 1828.
[344] To show the effect of emotion in causing a relapse, he gives an
instance, almost the only concrete illustration in all his book: An
Irishwoman, Ann McCarthy, aged 26, was admitted to Guy’s Hospital on 20
June, 1827, with “adynamic fever of the second degree,” having been
already ill for two weeks: the course of her fever was favourable and she
was “soon convalescent.” While still in the ward mending her strength, she
lent her bonnet to another female patient to go out with; finding that her
kindness had been abused by the woman forgetting to return the bonnet, she
became exceedingly angry, relapsed into the fever on the 10th of July, was
wildly delirious for several days, and died on the 19th of July. At this
time it was the practice at Guy’s to examine the bodies after death; but
permission was refused in the case in question, so that Burne was unable
to say “whether the bowels were affected.” The case, therefore, may have
been one of relapsing enteric fever. A similar ambiguity is discussed by
Hughes Bennett in his _Principles and Practice of Physic_ (p. 923), and
decided in favour of relapsing fever proper, or relapsing synocha.
[345] Sir William Jenner, M.D., _Lectures and Essays on Fevers and
Diphtheria_, 1849 to 1879. London, 1893.
[346] Christison, _Life_, u. s. I. 341.
[347] “Cases showing the frequency of the occurrence of Follicular
Ulceration in the Mucous Membrane of the Intestine during the progress of
Idiopathic Fever, with Dissections, and Observations on its Pathology.”
_Lond. Med. and Physical Journ._, Aug. 1826, p. 97.
[348] _Ibid._ p. 351.
[349] Burne, u. s.
[350] Richard Bright, M.D., _Reports of Medical Cases_. Part I., 1827.
[351] _Life of Sir Robert Christison_, I. 144. Also in _Trans. Soc. Sc.
Assn._ 1863, p. 104.
[352] _Edin. Med. Journ._, Jan. 1858, p. 588. Cf. _infra_, under
Dysentery, 1828.
[353] Reid, _Trans. K. and Q. Coll. of Phys. in Ireland_, V.; O’Brien,
_ibid._
[354] Writing in 1839, Dr Stokes, of Dublin, made the following remarkable
assertion (_Dub. Journ. Med. and Chem. Sc._ XV. p. 3, note): “In the
epidemic of 1826 and 1827 we observed the follicular ulceration
(dothienenteritis of the French) in the greater number of cases.” As the
epidemic of 1826-27 was almost wholly one of relapsing fever, the
statement is at least puzzling. It was made twelve years after the
epidemic, at a time when the discrepancies between British and French
observers, as to the occurrence of ulceration of the ileum in continued
fever, were much discussed. Dr Lombard, of Geneva, having visited Glasgow,
Dublin and other places, and confirmed the fact that the characteristic
lesion of enteric fever was at that time only occasional, went on to say
that Irish typhus was a species of disease by itself, a _morbus miseriae_.
Whereupon the editor of the ‘Dublin Journal of Medical Science’ (XII. 503,
in a review of Cowan’s Glasgow Statistics) gave the following truly Irish
reply: “Had Dr Lombard made more inquiries, he would have found that
Ireland is not so sunk in misery and debasement but that she can produce
occasionally a fever which, in abdominal ulcerations, can compete with the
sporadic diseases of her wealthier and more enlightened neighbours.” It
may have been in the same patriotic spirit that Stokes declared “the
greater number of cases” in the epidemic of 1826 and 1827 to have had
follicular ulceration.
[355] G. L. Roupell, M.D., _Some Account of a Fever prevalent in 1831_.
Lond. 1837.
[356] In addition to what has been said on this point already, for
particular epidemics, I shall give a statement for ordinary years by Dr
Carrick, of Bristol, in his ‘Medical Topography’ of that city: _Trans.
Prov. Med. Assocn._ II. (1834), p. 176. “Continued fever is common enough,
but nine-tenths of the cases are of a simple character, terminating for
the most part within seven days, and unaccompanied with anything more
serious than slight catarrhal or rheumatic disorder. Typhus gravior is
rare--much more so than might be expected.”
[357] Charles West, M.D., “Historical Notices designed to illustrate the
question whether Typhus ought to be classed among the Exanthematous
Fevers.” _Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ._ 1840, April, p. 279.
[358] Alexander Kilgour, M.D., _ibid._ Oct. 1841, p. 381.
[359] Cowan, “Vital Statistics of Glasgow,” _Journ. Statist. Soc._ III.
[360] Cases at Mile-End Fever Hospital.
[361] Including 906 male fever-patients at Albion Street temporary
hospital.
[362] _Blackwood’s Magazine_, March, 1838, p. 289.
[363] In 1819 the Irish in Glasgow had been estimated at 1 in 9·67: in
1831 the Irish part of the population had risen to 1 in 5·69. Dr Cowan,
however, said of them: “From ample opportunities of observation, they
appear to me to exhibit much less of that squalid misery and habitual
addiction to the use of ardent spirits than the Scotch of the same grade.”
[364] Robert Cowan, M.D., “Statistics of Fever in Glasgow for 1837.”
_Lancet_, April 10, 1839.
[365] James Arrott, M.D., _Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ._, Jan. 1839, p.
121.
[366] Craigie _ibid._ April, 1837.
[367] Christison, _Monthly Journ. Med. Sc._ X. 1850, p. 262.
[368] Kilgour, u. s.
[369] Cowan, _Journ. Statist. Soc._ III. 1841.
[370] Arrott, u. s.
[371] Craigie, u. s.
[372] _Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ._ July, 1838.
[373] _Principles and Practice of Physic_, 3rd ed. 1848, II. 742, 732.
[374] _First Report of the Registrar-General_, London, 1839.
[375] The district registrars had hardly organised their work in the first
two or three years of registration. Some gave much more complete returns
than others. There was a reluctance to register births, and the marriages
were not all registered. But the totals of deaths came out very nearly as
the actuaries had expected.
[376] The Third Report of the Registrar-General gives the mortality in all
parts of England from typhus in 1839 (as well as from scarlatina) in an
elaborate table of the registration districts and sub-districts.
[377] W. Budd, M.D., _Lancet_, 27 Dec. 1856, and 2 July, 1859. Dr Budd,
who had been studying in Paris and seeing much typhoid fever, but little
or no typhus, in the service of Louis at La Pitié hospital, took the whole
of these cases for enteric or typhoid, and insisted, in his later life, on
the ground of his North Tawton experiences in 1839, that typhoid fever
spread by contagion. He published numerous papers on this theme (_Lancet_,
27 Dec. 1856, another series in the same journal from 2 July to Nov. 1859,
_Brit. Med. Journ._ Nov.-Dec. 1861, and, finally, a volume of reprints
with additions, _Typhoid Fever, its Nature, Mode of Spreading and
Prevention_, London, 1873). But he published no clinical cases nor
post-mortem notes, to make good his 1839 diagnosis, on which the whole
matter turned, contenting himself with an assurance that he knew typhoid
well from studying it under Louis (who, at that time, believed that the
typhus of armies, gaols, &c. and of the British writers, was the same as
the fever which he, and others after him, named typhoid). He also made the
following six statements, as if he were making affidavit: (1) that the
great majority of the cases had early diarrhoea, (2) that three had
profuse intestinal haemorrhage, (3) that more or less of tympanitis was
almost universal in the epidemic, (4) that in nearly every case he found
the rose-coloured lenticular spots, (5) that one case, which was the only
one examined post-mortem, had the characteristic ulceration of the
intestine, and (6) that one fatal case had the symptoms of perforation of
the gut. This summary manner, asking in effect to be taken on trust, is
not usually accepted from innovators, none of the great discoverers having
resorted to it. Hitherto, however, no one has thought proper to question
Budd’s diagnosis of the epidemic fever in his North Tawton practice, nor
even to remark upon his strange error of treating the epidemic of 1838-39
all over Britain as purely one of typhoid (_Lancet_, 27 Dec. 1856). But
everyone knew that typhoid fever did not spread in the way that he
described (doubtless correctly for the above cases). After the publication
of his book in 1873 an attempt was made by an influential layman in the
_Times_ (9 Nov. 1874) to popularize Budd’s fallacies or paradoxes on the
contagiousness of typhoid. “How,” it was asked, after a summary of the
North Tawton epidemic in 1839, “could a disease whose characters are so
severely demonstrable, have ever been imagined to be non-contagious? How
could such a doctrine be followed, as it has been, to the destruction of
human life?”
[378] “For three years past trade had been getting worse and worse, and
the price of provisions higher and higher. This disparity between the
amount of the earnings of the working classes and the price of their food
occasioned, in more cases than could well be imagined, disease and death.
Whole families went through a gradual starvation. They only wanted a Dante
to record their sufferings. And yet even his words would fall short of the
awful truth; they could only present an outline of the tremendous facts of
the destitution that surrounded thousands upon thousands in the terrible
years 1839, 1840, and 1841. Even philanthropists who had studied the
subject were forced to own themselves perplexed in their endeavour to
ascertain the real causes of the misery; the whole matter was of so
complicated a nature that it became next to impossible to understand it
thoroughly.... The most deplorable and enduring evil that arose out of the
period of commercial depression to which I refer, was this feeling of
alienation between the different classes of society. It is so impossible
to describe, or even faintly to picture, the state of distress which
prevailed in the town [Manchester] at that time, that I will not attempt
it; and yet I think again that surely, in a Christian land, it was not
known even so feebly as words could tell it, or the more happy and
fortunate would have thronged with their sympathy and their aid. In many
instances the sufferers wept first, and then they cursed. Their vindictive
feelings exhibited themselves in rabid politics. And when I hear, as I
have heard, of the sufferings and privations of the poor, of provision
shops, where ha’porths of tea, sugar, butter, and even flour, were sold to
accommodate the indigent--of parents sitting in their clothes by the
fireside during the whole night for seven weeks together, in order that
their only bed and bedding might be reserved for the use of their large
family--of others sleeping upon the cold hearthstone for weeks in
succession, without adequate means of providing themselves with food or
fuel--and this in the depth of winter--of others being compelled to fast
for days together, uncheered by any hope of better fortune, living,
moreover, or rather starving, in a crowded garret, or damp cellar, and
gradually sinking under the pressure of want and despair into a premature
grave; and when this has been confirmed by the evidence of their careworn
looks, their excited feelings, and their desolate homes--can I wonder that
many of them, in such times of misery and destitution, spoke and acted
with ferocious precipitation?” Mrs Gaskell, _Mary Barton_.
[379] John Goodsir, “On a Diseased Condition of the Intestinal Glands,”
_Lond. and Edin. Monthly Journ. of Med. Science_, April, 1842. He does not
enter on the question “as to whether the subject of the present paper
constitutes a distinct species of disease, or be merely a form of the
ordinary continued fever”; but he appears to recognize that a certain
district may have a form of fever special to it, as Reid had probably told
him.
[380] John Reid, M.D., “Analysis and Details of Forty-seven Inspections
after Death,” _Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ._, Oct. 1839, p. 456.
[381] Reid, u. s., from Home’s records.
[382] Murchison, _Continued Fevers_, 2nd ed. 1873, p. 444.
[383] Lombard, in _Dublin Journal of Med. Sc._ X. (1836), p. 17. He bore
witness, also, to the rarity of the bowel-lesion in the Glasgow fevers.
This was confirmed by Dr Perry, of that city, _Ibid._ X. 381. See also
Julius Staberoh, M.D., “Researches on the Occurrence of Typhus in the
Manufacturing Cities of Great Britain,” _Ibid._ XIII. 426.
[384] _Trans. Prov. Med. Assoc._ II. (1834), p. 176.
[385] _Continued Fevers_, 2nd ed. 1873, p. 443.
[386] Christison, “On the Changes which have taken place in the
Constitution of Fevers and Inflammations in Edinburgh during the last
forty years.” Paper read at Med. Chir. Soc. Edin. 4 March, 1857. _Edin.
Med. Journ._ Jan. 1858, p. 577.
[387] _Continued Fevers_, under the head of “Typhus,” p. 47.
[388] See especially John Rose Cormack, M.D., _Natural History, Pathology
and Treatment of the Epidemic Fever at present prevailing in Edinburgh and
other towns_. Lond. 1843; and the papers by Wardell, _Lond. Med. Gaz._ N.
S. II-V.
[389] Dr Betty, of Lowtherstown, Fermanagh, _Dubl. Quart. Journ. Med. Sc._
VII. 125.
[390] Murchison says that the enteric fever of the end of 1846 was
prevalent at many places in England where the epidemic of typhus never
made its appearance, and that in Edinburgh (according to an unpublished
essay by Waters) most of the enteric cases not only occurred prior to the
outbreak of the epidemic of Irish fever, but came from localities in the
neighbouring country and from the best houses of the New Town--not from
the crowded courts of the Old Town, to which the later epidemic of typhus
and relapsing fever was restricted. Murchison, u. s. p. 49. The following
papers relate to the autumnal typhoid of 1846 in England: Sibson, “Fever
at Nottingham and neighbourhood in Summer and Autumn of 1846,” _Med. Gaz._
XXXIX.; Taylor, “Fever at Old and New Lenton in 1846,” _Med. Times_, XV.
159 and _Med. Gaz._ XXXVIII. 127; Turner, “Fever at Minchinhampton in
Autumn 1846,” _Med. Gaz._ XLII. 157; Brenchley, “Fever in Berkshire in
1846,” _Med. Gaz._ XXXVIII. 1082; Bree, “Epidemic Fever at Great
Finborough in Autumn of 1846,” _Prov. Med. and Surg. Journ._ 1847, p. 676.
[391] In the _Report of the Registrar-General for the year 1847_.
[392] This was the occasion which furnished Father Newman with a famous
argument for the _bona fides_ of his co-religionists: “The Irish fever cut
off between Liverpool and Leeds thirty priests and more young men in the
flower of their days, old men who seemed entitled to some quiet time after
their long toil. There was a bishop cut off in the North; but what had a
man of his ecclesiastical rank to do with the drudgery and danger of sick
calls, except that Christian faith and charity constrained him?” John
Henry Newman, D.D., _History of My Religious Opinions_, London, 1865, p.
272.
[393] Leigh, in _Report Reg.-Gen. for 1847_, X. p. xx.
[394] H. M. Hughes, “On the Continued Fever at present existing in the
southern districts of the metropolis,” _Lond. Med. Gaz._ Nov. 1847;
Laycock, “Unusual prevalence of Fever at York,” _Lond. Med. Gaz._ Nov.
1847; Bottomley, “Notes on the Famine Fever at Croydon in 1847,” _Prov.
Med. and Surg. Journ._ 1847; Ormerod, _Clinical Observations on Continued
Fever at Bartholomew’s Hospital_, Lond. 1848; Art. in _Brit. and For. Med.
Chir. Rev. 1848_, I. 285; Duncan, _Journ. Pub. Health_, I. 200
(Liverpool); Paxton, _Prov. Med. Journ._ 1847, pp. 533, 596 (Rugby).
[395] The following papers relate to the epidemic in Scotland in 1847:
Orr, “Historical and Statistical Sketch of the progress of Epidemic Fever
in Glasgow during 1847,” _Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ._ LXIX.; Stark, “On
the Mortality of Edinburgh and Leith for 1847,” _Ibid._ and LXXI.; R.
Paterson, “Account of the Epidemic Fever of 1847-8” in Edinburgh, _Ibid._
LXX.; W. Robertson, “Notes on the Epidemic Fever of 1847-8,” _Month.
Journ. of Med. Sc._ IX. 368; J. C. Steele, “View of the Sickness and
Mortality in the Glasgow Royal Infirmary during 1847,” _Edin. Med. and
Surg. Journ._ LXX.; J. C. Steele, “Statistics of the Glasgow Infirmary for
1848,” _Ibid._ LXXII. 241; J. Paterson, “Statistics of the Barony Parish
Fever Hospital of Glasgow in 1847-8,” _Ibid._ LXX. 357.
[396] Buchanan, _Report Med. Officer Privy Council for 1864_, and _Trans.
Epid. Soc._ 1865, II. 17; Hamilton, _Lancet_, II. 1867, p. 608
(Liverpool); Martyn, _Brit. Med. Journ._ July, 1863; Davies, _Med. Times
and Gaz._ II. 1867, p. 427 (Bristol); Thompson, _St George’s Hosp.
Reports_, I. (1866), p. 47 (London); Allbutt, _ibid._ p. 61 (Leeds).
[397] Buchanan, _Report Med. Off. Privy Council for 1865_, p. 210.
[398] James Stark, M.D., “Remarks on the Epidemic Fever of Scotland during
1863-64-65” etc., _Trans. Epidem. Soc._ N. S. II. 312. See also Russell,
_Glasg. Med. Journ._ July, 1864, and R. Beveridge (for Aberdeen),
_Lancet_, I. 1868, p. 630.
[399] Weber, _Lancet_, I. 1869, pp. 221, 255; Murchison, _ibid._ II. 1869,
pp. 503, 647; Gee (Liverpool), _Brit. Med. Journ._ II. 1870, p. 246;
Robinson (Leeds), _Lancet_, I. 1871, p. 644; Muirhead (Edinburgh), _Edin.
Med. Journ._ July, 1870, p. 1; Rabagliati (Bradford), _ibid._ Dec. 1873;
Tennant (Glasgow), _Glasgow Med. Journ._ May, 1871, p. 354; Armstrong
(Newcastle), _Lancet_, I. 1873, p. 48.
[400] Muirhead (l. c.) says: “In no single instance which came under my
observation could starvation be said to be the immediate cause of the
disease. Not one of those individuals could be said to be emaciated.... On
strict and repeated inquiry, not one of them would confess to having been
in destitute circumstances.” During the winter of 1870-71 I attended from
the Edinburgh New Dispensary several relapsing-fever patients at their
homes, and can clearly remember having been surprised at the condition of
decency and comfort in which I found them. The appearance of comfort was
certainly due in part to the district visitors, who were numerous and
active during the epidemic.
[401] Spear, “Typhus Fever in various parts of England, 1886-87.” _Rep.
Med. Off. Loc. Gov. Bd._ N. S. XVI. p. 169.
[402] 2303 of these fever deaths in 1864 occurred in the eight principal
towns of Scotland, classified as follows: typhus, 1450, relapsing fever,
371, gastric, enteric, or typhoid, 382.
[403] G. B. Longstaff, M.D., _Trans. Epid. Soc._ 1884-5, p. 72, reprinted
in his _Studies in Statistics_, Lond. 1891, p. 402. The seasonal curve for
the typhoid admissions to the London Fever Hospital over a longer period
is nearly the same, as well as that of the registered deaths by typhoid in
all London, 1869-84.
[404] The following large registration districts besides those in the
Table, had enteric-fever death rates of ·5 and upwards per 1000 persons
living, in the ten years 1871-80; in nearly all of them there has been a
marked decline in the ten years 1881-90:--Durham, Hartlepool, Easington,
Houghton-le-Spring, Darlington, Gateshead (county Durham); Morpeth
(Northumberland); Aysgarth, Todmorden, Dewsbury, Pontefract, Barnsley,
Rotherham (Yorkshire); Dudley, Leigh, Ormskirk (Lancashire); Crickhowell
(Wales); Worksop, Radford (Nottingham); Shrewsbury; Peterborough; Portsea
Island (Hants). Of the London districts, Hackney had the highest enteric
fever, 0·46 per 1000 in a general death-rate of 20·78. The high rate of a
decennium is not unfrequently brought up by one great explosion. In many
of the Lancashire, Yorkshire and Midland towns, with rates about ·4 per
1000 persons, the rate has been somewhat steady from year to year. In the
decennium 1871-80, many special outbreaks, some of them in villages, were
reported on by the inspectors of the Medical Department, and traced for
the most part to water-supplies tainted by the percolation of excrement.
[405] The Registration District of Middlesborough was carved out of
Stockton and Guisborough in 1875.
[406] Registration District containing a population of 72,707 on a mean
between the census of 1871 and that of 1881. In 1891 the population was
146,812.
[407] F. W. Barry, M.D., in _Rep. Med. Off. Loc. Gov. Board for 1882_, p.
72. The contention of the inspector was that the water-supply had been
tainted by enteric-fever evacuations from a case which began on 22 May in
a cottage some half-mile distant from the reservoir but in communication
with it through ditches and brooks. The area of the water-supply did not
correspond with the area of the fever.
[408] The report for the Medical Department by F. W. Barry, M.D. (_Enteric
Fever in the Tees Valley_, 1890-91, Parl. papers, Nov. 1893), is an
elaborate argument to prove that the flooded state of the Tees was indeed
the relevant antecedent, not as indexing the rise of the ground-water in
the respective towns, but as dislodging and sweeping down the slops,
sewage and dry refuse of the market town of Barnard Castle, in upper
Teesdale, whereby the water taken in from the Tees two miles above
Darlington to the tanks, filters and reservoirs of the Darlington
Corporation, and of the Stockton and Middlesborough Water Board, was
tainted in some unusual degree--a hypothesis the more remarkable that the
refuse, such as it was, had been suspended or dissolved in an unusual
volume of water, that little refuse could have collected between the first
floods and the second, and that no cases of enteric fever were known in
the upper valley of the Tees. This judicial deliverance has not been
accepted by the authorities of Darlington, Stockton and Middlesborough,
nor by the Royal Commission on Water Supply, before whom it was laid.
[409] Besides the epidemic at Worthing in 1893, which is still _sub
judice_, the best known instance of typhoid following a certain
water-supply is the explosion at Redhill and Caterham in Jan.-Feb. 1879,
_Rep. Med. Off. Loc. Gov. Board, for 1879_, Parl. papers, 1880, p. 78. The
first instance alleged of the distribution by milk was the Islington
explosion in July-August 1870 (Ballard, _Med. Times and Gaz._ 1870, II.
611). It was soon followed by the Marylebone explosion in the summer of
1873 (_Rep. Med. Off. L. G. B._, N. S. II. 193); but such instances have
become less common, while instances of scarlatina and diphtheria following
a milk-supply have become more common.
[410] _Second Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe_, May, 1795.
[411] Berkeley’s _Querist_, Q. 362.
[412] Radulphus de Diceto, _Imag. Histor._ Eng. Hist. Soc. ed. I. 350.
[413] “Topogr. Hiberniae” in _Opera_, Rolls ed. V. 67. This and the
preceding reference had escaped the notice of Dr John O’Brien, in the
historical introduction to his _Observations on the Acute and Chronic
Dysentery of Ireland_. Dublin, 1822.
[414] _Polychronicon_, Rolls ed. I. 332-3.
[415] “Many of the English-Irish have by little and little been infected
with the Irish filthinesse, and that in the very cities, excepting Dublin
and some of the better sort in Waterford, where the English continually
lodging in their houses, they more retain the English diet.” And again:
“In like sort the degenerated citizens are somewhat infected with the
Irish filthinesse, as well in lowsie beds, foule sheetes, and all linnen,
as in many other particulars.... Touching the meere or wild Irish, it may
truely be said of them, which was of old spoken of the Germans, namely,
that they wander slovenly and naked, and lodge in the same house (if it
may be called a house) with their beasts.” Fynes Moryson, _Itinerary_, Pt.
IV. p. 180.
[416] _Ireland’s Natural History, &c._ Written by Gerard Boate, late
Doctor of Physick to the State in Ireland. And now published by Samuel
Hartlib, Esquire. Lond. 1652. The author died at Dublin, shortly after his
arrival there, on 9/19 January 1650/49. His information would seem to have
come in part from his brother Arnold Boate, resident in Ireland.
[417] Hardiman, _History of Galway_, p. 126 _seq._ The plague from July
1649 to Lady Day 1650 is said to have swept away 3700 of the inhabitants,
including 210 of the most respectable burgesses and freemen, with their
families. The capitulation on 5 April, 1652, was followed by famine
throughout the country, and by a revival of plague for two years, “during
which upwards of one-third of the population of the province was swept
away.”
[418] _Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches_, II. 55, 77.
[419] Edmund Borlase, _History of the Reduction of Ireland to the Crown of
England_. 1675, p. 172.
[420] Boyle’s _Works_, fol. Lond. 1744, V. 92.
[421] The war-pestilence at Londonderry in 1689 is the third recorded
epidemic of the kind there, not including what may have happened in the
capture of the town by the Catholics in O’Neill’s rebellion, when Derry
was destroyed, to be rebuilt in 1613 by the London Companies with a new
charter under the name of Londonderry. The first historical occasion of
sickness was in 1566. The troops of Elizabeth were landed on Loch Foyle in
October and built their huts on the site of the old monastery. In the
course of the winter the greater part of a force of 1100 men perished by
dysentery and the infection which it breeds (see former volume, p. 372).
On 12 Dec. 1642, a year after the outbreak of the Rebellion of Confederate
Catholics, a petition of the agents of the distressed city of Londonderry
to the Commons represented that there were 6059 persons in the city,
whereof 5123 were women and children, or sick, aged or impotent; only 2000
were inhabitants of the city, the rest having fled there for safety.
Spotted fever had broken out. (_Hist. MSS. Comis._ V. “MSS. of the House
of Lords.”)
[422] With the exception of the last quoted piece of information, the most
minute particulars of the siege of Londonderry are in an essay by an army
chaplain, John Mackenzie, _A Narrative of the Siege of Londonderry_,
London, 1690, which was written to correct and augment _A True Account of
the Siege of Londonderry_ by the Rev. Mr George Walker, rector of
Donoghmoore in the county of Tyrone, and late Governor of Derry. London,
1689.
[423] See former volume, pp. 634-43.
[424] Minute particulars of it are given in _An Impartial History of the
Wars in Ireland_ [1689-1692]. By George Story, Chaplain to Sir Thomas
Gower’s Regiment. London, 1693. Part I.
[425] Gangrene of the extremities was one of the symptoms of the “plague
of Athens” as described by Thucydides. There is no need to invoke ergotism
for an explanation of it, as some have done.
[426] At that time there was little systematic knowledge of military
hygiene. Nearly two generations after, the experiences of Pringle, Donald
Monro and Brocklesby in the campaigns of 1743-48 and 1758-63 in Germany
and the Netherlands, yielded many valuable hints, some of which Virchow
made use of in compiling his “Rules of Health for the Army in the Field,”
in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. See his _Gesammelte Abhandlungen
aus dem Gebiete der öffentlichen Medicin und Seuchenlehre_.
[427] Bde. Berlin, 1879, II. 193.
[428] Joseph Rogers, M.D. _Essay on Epidemic Diseases._ Dublin, 1734.
[429] In further illustration of the power of morbid effluvia, he says:
“We see how small a portion of a putrid animal juice, taken into the blood
by inoculation, like a most active _leaven_ sets all in a ferment; and in
a very short time brings the whole juices of a sound body into an equal
state of corruption with itself,”--instancing war-typhus, plague from
cadaveric corruption (according to Paré), the Oxford gaol fever, and “a
later instance at Taunton not more than five or six years ago.”