[430] Dr Rogan of Strabane, in his _Condition of the Middle and Lower

Classes in the North of Ireland_, 1819, was of a different opinion (p.

90): “No police regulations exist in Strabane to prevent the slaughtering

of cattle in any part of the town. The butchers, therefore, most of whom

live in the narrow streets near the shambles, have their slaughter-houses

immediately behind their dwellings. The garbage is thrown into a large

pit, which is generally cleaned but once in the year, at the season when

the manure is required for planting potatoes, and at this time an

offensive smell pervades the whole town, and is perceptible for a

considerable distance around. The families exposed constantly to the

effluvia arising from these heaps of putrid offal might have been expected

to suffer severely from fever; but on the contrary, they were found to be

much less liable to it than others in the same rank of life. This was no

doubt owing to their living chiefly on animal food, and thus escaping the

debility induced by deficient nourishment, which certainly had the chief

share in creating a predisposition to the disease.”

[431] Bp. Nicholson to Archbp. of Canterbury, cited by Lecky (II. 216)

from _Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 6116_.

[432] Cited by O’Rourke, _History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847_.

Dublin, 1875, from pamphlet in the Halliday Collection of the Royal Irish

Academy.

[433] See Boulter’s _Letters to the English Ministers_.

[434] Wakefield’s _Ireland_, II. 6, cited by Barker and Cheyne.

[435] John Rutty, M.D. _Chronological History of the Weather and Seasons

and prevailing Diseases in Dublin during Forty Years._ London, 1770.

[436] Maurice O’Connell, M.D. _Morborum acutorum et chronicorum

Observationes._ Dublin, 1746.

[437] Boulter’s _Letters_. Oxford, 1769, I. 226.

[438] Lecky, II. 217.

[439] Berkeley’s _Works_. Ed. Fraser, Oxford, 1871, III. 369.

[440] Lord John Russell used these historical parallels from England and

Scotland in his great speech in the House of Commons, during the debate on

Ireland, 25th January, 1847.

[441] Fraser, “Life and Letters of Berkeley,” in _Works_, IV. 262.

[442] Berkeley to Prior, Feb. 8 and 15, 1740/1.

[443] He published the receipt in a Dublin journal.

[444] Berkeley to Thomas Prior, in “Life and Letters,” u. s., p. 265. Some

attempts at relief-works had been made the year before, two of which are

still to be seen in the obelisks on Killiney Hill near Dublin and on a

hill near Maynooth (“Lady Conolly’s Folly.” O’Rourke, u. s.).

[445] Rutty, p. 93.

[446] (Dublin, 1741).

[447] Cited by O’Rourke. Short, a contemporary, also says that the fever

in Galway was like a plague.

[448] Dutton, _Statistical Survey of the County of Galway_. Dublin, 1824,

p. 313: “1741. A fever raged this year that occasioned the judges to hold

the assizes in Tuam. Numbers of the merchants of Galway died this year,

and multitudes of poor people, caused partly by fever and by the scarcity,

as wheat was 28_s._ per cwt.”

[449] The author of _The Groans of Ireland_ (Dublin, 1741) says: “On my

return to this country I found it the most miserable scene of distress

that I ever read of in history: want and misery in every face; the rich

unable to relieve the poor; the road spread with dead and dying bodies;

mankind of the colour of the docks and nettles which they fed on; two or

three, sometimes more, on a car going to the grave for want of bearers to

carry them, and many buried only in the fields and ditches where they

perished.” Skelton, a Protestant clergyman, says: “Whole parishes in some

places were almost desolate; the dead have been eaten in the fields by

dogs, for want of people to bury them.” Skelton’s _Works_, Vol. V. Cited

by Lecky.

[450] Report by Dr Phipps to Baron Wainwright, 10 March, 1741. Cited by F.

C. Webb, _Trans. Epidem. Soc._ 1857, p. 67.

[451] Smith’s _Kerry_, p. 77. He adds that many were excused the

hearth-tax on account of their poverty, by certificate of the magistrates;

so that the decrease in 1744 may mean a greater proportion excused the

tax, as well as a depopulation.

[452] How near the verge of want the people were is brought out by an

experience in Galway county in 1745: a great fall of snow smothered vast

numbers of cattle and sheep, which caused a great many farmers to

surrender their lands. Wheat rose from six to eighteen shillings the

hundredweight, while, after the distress, the best land in Connaught could

be rented for five shillings an acre. Dutton’s _Galway_, p. 313.

[453] For Kinsale, Cork and Bandon, see Marjoribanks, _Med. Press and

Circ._ 1867, II., 8.

[454] James Sims, M.D. _Observations on Epidemic Disorders, with Remarks

on Nervous and Malignant Fevers._ London, 1773, p. 10. The preface is

dated from London, whither Sims had removed from Tyrone. He rose to

eminence in the London profession.

[455] _A Letter to a Member of the Irish Parliament relative to the

present State of Ireland._ By Philo-Irene. London, 20 May, 1755. The

turning of hundreds of acres into one dairy-farm had caused the

depopulation which Goldsmith described in the _Deserted Village_: “By this

unhappy policy several villages have been deserted at different times by

the inhabitants, and numbers of them set a-begging,” p. 6.

[456] Sims, u. s. pp. 164-5.

[457] F. Barker and J. Cheyne, _Account of the Fever lately epidemical in

Ireland_, 2 vols. London, 1821. This work relates mainly to the epidemic

of 1817-19, but there is a short retrospect, the valuable part of which is

for the years 1797-1802.

[458] The history of the Limerick and Belfast fever-hospitals is carried

back to a few years before the founding of the Waterford hospital; but the

latter was the first that was formally organised as a fever-hospital.

[459] “The fever in 1800 and 1801 very generally terminated on the fifth

or seventh day by perspiration; the disease was then very liable to recur.

The poor were the chief sufferers by it; and it was much more fatal

amongst the middling and upper classes in proportion to the number

attacked.” Barker and Cheyne, _op. cit._ p. 20.

[460] Smith’s _Kerry_. Dublin, 1756, p. 77.

[461] Smith’s _Kerry_, p. 88.

[462] _A Tour in Ireland ... in 1776-78._ London, 1780.

[463] The forty-shillings freeholder of Ireland was a life-renter whose

farm was worth forty shillings annual rent more than the rent reserved in

his lease.

[464] Malthus, _Essay on the Principle of Population_. Bk. II. chap. 10,

Bk. III. chap. 8, and Bk. IV. chap. 11.

[465] Francis Rogan, M.D., _Observations on the Condition of the Middle

and Lower Classes in the North of Ireland, as it tends to promote the

diffusion of Contagious Fever; with the History and Treatment of the late

Epidemic Disorders_. London, 1819.

[466] William Carleton, the _vates sacer_ of the Irish peasantry, was

born, in 1798, in one of those Tyrone thatched cottages, in the parish of

Clogher. His father had changed his holding three times before William,

the youngest child, was fourteen years old; the last of the four was a

farm of sixteen or eighteen acres in the north of Clogher parish, and

“nearer the mountains.” Carleton says that he “lived among the people as

one of themselves” until he was twenty-two, which would have been until

the year 1820; so that he probably saw the famine and fever of 1817-18

among that very Tyrone peasantry whom Dr Rogan brings before us from the

medical side. The scenes of famine and fever in the ‘Black Prophet’ are

those “which he himself witnessed in 1817, 1822, and other subsequent

years,” having been recalled by him in the form of a tale which was

published in 1846, at the beginning of the Great Famine of that and the

following year. His early recollections of famine and fever come into

other tales, such as the ‘Clarionet,’ the ‘Poor Scholar’ and ‘Tubber

Derg,’ in which last is related the almost inevitable reduction to poverty

and at length to beggary of a most upright and industrious farmer owing to

the fall of prices, without fall of rents, after the Peace of 1815.

Carleton’s work has always the quality of fidelity, and he may be credited

when he says that the scenes of famine and fever are not exaggerated.

[467] Rogan, u. s. p. 95: “A farmer within my knowledge, who holds fifteen

acres of arable land, with nearly an equal quantity of cut-out bog, for

which he pays £28 per annum, has erected six cabins for labourers. They

are built with mud, instead of lime, and are thatched, so that they cannot

each have cost more than three or four pounds. For some time he received

from three of his tenants six guineas per annum, and from the others two

guineas each, the latter only holding a cottage and a small garden [the

former three having also grazing for a milch cow, half a rood of land for

flax, and half an acre for oats, with privileges of cutting turf and

planting as many potatoes as they could each provide manure for]; but they

have been all so reduced in circumstances by the late scarcity as to be

now unable to keep a cow, and for the two last years have rented their

cabins and potato gardens alone. All the straw raised on the farm would

scarcely suffice to keep the houses water-fast if applied solely to this

purpose.” One of the first things that the Marquis of Abercorn did in the

epidemic of 1817 was to call upon the subletting farmers on his manors to

repair the roofs of their cottiers’ cabins.

[468] Carleton, in one of his tales, has given a vivid picture of the

lurid or gloomy appearance of the country in the late autumn of 1816, as

if it foreboded the distress of the following spring.

[469] Probably their cattle had been impounded for rent and tithe. The

author of the pamphlet _Lachrymae Hiberniae_ (Dublin, 1822), a resident on

the western coast, says (p. 8), with reference to the seizures for rent

and tithe: “Oh what scenes of misery were exhibited in Ireland in this way

during the years 1817, ’18 and ’19; by that time the people were left

without cattle; after this their potatoes and corn were seized and sold,

and in some cases their household furniture, even to their blankets.” The

hardness of landlords in general is alleged by Dr Rogan, with an exception

in favour of the Marquis of Abercorn in his own district.

[470] There was dysentery also in the autumn of 1818. Cheyne, _Dubl. Hosp.

Rep._ III. 1.

[471] Rogan, p. 31.

[472] The following is an instance, from Boyle, in Roscommon: “In the

middle of June, 1817, or a little earlier, a soup-shop was established

here by subscription, where soup was daily given out to one thousand

persons, who, naturally anxious to procure it in time, crowded together

during its distribution, though every pains was taken to keep order

amongst them. From the 16th to the 23rd of that month the weather became

suddenly and unusually hot, and the disease about that period spread

rapidly among those persons, the greater number of whom attributed the

origin of their complaint to attendance at the soup-shop; among that

crowd, many of whom I have seen faint from absolute want during exposure

to the sun, there were persons from houses where the disease existed.”

Report by Dr Verdon of Boyle, 26 June, 1818, in Barker and Cheyne, I. 325.

[473] Dr King of Tralee (Barker and Cheyne, I. p. 177) wrote as follows:

“It is a custom in this country for very poor persons, living in the

country parts, and possessing a miserable hovel with a small garden, after

they have sowed their potatoes, to shut up their hut and carrying their

families with them, to roam about the country, trusting to the known

hospitality of the towns and villages for shelter and subsistence till the

time for digging the potatoes shall have arrived.”

[474] Barker and Cheyne, I. 60.

[475] In Carleton’s tale of ‘The Poor Scholar,’ it is related how the

hay-mowers stopped in their work to erect a hut for the fever-stricken

youth, and a much larger hut not far from the first for the numerous

persons who ministered to his wants under a kind of quarantine

arrangement. The stealing of milk from rich men’s cows for the sick youth

is the subject of a dialogue between the Roman Catholic bishop and the

leader of the kindly party of mowers, in which the latter shows a skill in

casuistry creditable to his religious instructors.

[476] William Harty, M.D., _Historic Sketch of the Contagious Fever

Epidemic in Ireland during 1817-19_. Dublin, 1820. This work contains

information collected by a circular of queries addressed to practitioners

in the several provinces. It was undertaken by Dr Harty at the instance of

Sir John Newport, M.P. for Waterford. The work by Barker and Cheyne on the

same epidemic took longer to prepare, having been published in 1821. See

also Cheyne, _Dubl. Hosp. Rep._ II. 1-147.

[477] Barker and Cheyne, p. 65. A similar incident comes into Carleton’s

tale of ‘The Clarionet’: “At length, out of compassion, the few neighbours

who feared not to attend a feverish death-bed, acting on the popular

belief that children under a certain age are not liable to catch a fever,

placed the boy in her arms.” This popular belief was well founded.

[478] Accounts from various places in Barker and Cheyne, and in Harty.

Rogan (u. s. p. 45) says: “The cases of typhus gravior were infinitely

more numerous among the rich and well-fed than among the poor; and with

them also the head was most frequently the seat of diseased action.”

[479] _Report on the Present State of the Distressed District in the South

of Ireland: with an Enquiry into the Causes of the Distresses of the

Peasantry and Farmers._ Dublin, 1822.

[480] _Lachrymae Hiberniae, or the Grievances of the Peasantry of Ireland,

especially in the Western Counties._ By a Resident Native. Dublin, 1822

(September). The author, a resident of the west coast, was concerned in

the distribution of relief, and positively asserts the saving of thousands

“from his own personal knowledge.”

[481] Robert James Graves, M.D., “Report on the Fever lately prevalent in

Galway and the West of Ireland.” _Trans. K. and Q. Col. Phys._ IV. (1824),

p. 408.

[482] John O’Brien, M.D., “On the Epidemic Dysentery which prevailed in

Dublin in the year 1825.” _Trans. K. and Q. Col. Phys._ V. (1828) p. 221;

Burke, _Ed. Med. Surg. Journ._ July, 1826, p. 56; Speer, _Med. Phys.

Journ._ N. S. VI. 199.

[483] John O’Brien, “Med. Rep. of the H. of Recovery, Cork Street, Dublin,

for the year ending 4 Jan. 1827.” _Trans. K. and Q. Col. Phys._ V. 512.

[484] Graves, _Clinical Medicine_, 1843. Lect. XVIII.

[485] O’Brien, u. s.

[486] “Remarks on the Epidemic Dysentery of the Autumn of 1826 in the

South of Ireland.” By Alexander McCarthy, M.D. _Edin. Med. and Surg.

Journ._ April, 1827, p. 289.

[487] “It is a melancholy picture of society to witness the increase of

wealth and luxury on one side, and the greatest want and wretchedness on

the other; to meet famine and exhaustion in the great body of the people,

in a country that produces as much food as would afford a full supply for

once and a half its present population; to see the granaries full of corn

and flour, and the great body of the people scarcely existing on a half

supply of bad potatoes. Such is the miserable situation of the Irish, a

race of people distinguished for their intellect, and above all for their

resignation and patience under afflictions the most trying.”

[488] _Dub. Quart. Journ. Med. Sc._ XI. 385.

[489] W. J. Geary, M.D., “Report of the St John’s Fever and Lock

Hospitals.” _Dub. Quart. Journ. Med. Sc._ XI. 378: XII. 94.

[490] Various descriptions of these exist, of which that by Carleton in

the tale ‘Barney Branagan,’ is probably not overdone.

[491] The Report of the Roscrea Fever Hospital for 1827 says: “In March,

when the dung is being removed from the back yards for the purpose of

planting the potatoes, the number of patients becomes double in the Fever

Hospital.” _Dublin Medical Press_, Jan. 1846, p. 235.

[492] Babington, “Epidemic Typhous Fever in Donoughmore.” _Dub. Quart.

Journ._ X. 404.

[493] G. A. Kennedy, “Report of Cork St. Fever Hosp. 1837-38.” _Ibid._

XIII. 311. Graves, _Ibid._ XIV. 363.

[494] Lynch, _Ibid._ N. S. VII. 388, gives some particulars of it also at

Loughrea, Galway, in 1840.

[495] _System of Clinical Medicine._ Dublin, 1843, p. 57. The “change of

type,” with special reference to treatment, is discussed more fully in

Lecture XXXIV. pp. 492-500. See also _Dub. Quart. Journ. Med. Sc._ XIV.

502, where a letter on the changed character of fever at Sligo is cited.

[496] _The Census of Ireland_, 1841, Parl. Papers, 1843. “Report on the

Table of Deaths,” by W. R. Wilde. The deaths in the family, with their

causes, &c., in each of the previous ten years were entered on the census

paper by the head of the family, or by the parish priest for him. These

returns were, of course, far from exhaustive or correct.

[497] Graves, _Clinical Medicine_, 1843, p. 46. Remarking on the much

greater frequency of fever in Ireland than in England, he says (p. 47):

“Nothing can be more remarkable than the facility with which a simple cold

(which in England would be perfectly devoid of danger), runs into

maculated fever in Ireland, and that, too, under circumstances quite free

from even the suspicion of contagion--in truth, except when fever is

epidemic, catching cold is its most usual cause.”

[498] The principal work on the general circumstances of the Irish famine

of 1846-47 is _The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847, with notices

of Earlier Irish Famines_. By Rev. John O’Rourke, P.P., M.R.I.A. Dublin,

1875.

[499] Joseph Lalor, M.D., _Dub. Quart. Journ. Med. Sc._ N. S. III. 38.

[500] Cited by O’Rourke, p. 152.

[501] _The Census of Ireland_, 1851. Part V. Table of deaths, vol. I.

Dublin, 1856, p. 235.

The following are a few instances of depopulation between 1841 and 1851.

Union of Loughrea, Co. Galway.

1841 65,636

1851 38,698

Union of Clonakilty, Co. Cork.

1841 52,185

1851 31,473

Union of Kanturk, Co. Cork.

1841 61,238

1851 41,801

Parish of Kanturk.

1841 4,096

1851 6,754

Union of Portumna, Co. Galway.

1841 30,714

1851 19,747

Union of Skibbereen, Co. Cork.

1841 57,439

1851 37,283

Parish of Skibbereen.

1841 9,557

1851 8,931

Union of Skull, Co. Cork.

1841 26,620

1851 16,866

Parish of Skull.

1841 2,895

1851 3,226

[502] _Essay on the Principle of Population._ Bk. IV. chap. XI. Thorold

Rogers has in many passages emphasized the advantages of the English

practice from medieval times of living on the dearest kind of corn; but he

seems to have overlooked the priority of Malthus throughout the whole of

the eleventh chapter of his fourth book. In _Six Centuries of Work and

Wages_ (p. 62), Rogers says: “Hence a high standard of subsistence is a

more important factor in the theory of population than any of those checks

which Malthus has enumerated.”

[503] Cited in Thomas Doubleday’s _Political Life of Sir Robert Peel_.

London, 1856, II. 398 _note_.

[504] It is a doctrine of economics that the higher standard of living

checks population. Thus Marshall says of England: “The growth of

population was checked by that rise in the standard of comfort which took

effect in the general adoption of wheat as the staple food of Englishmen

during the first half of the 18th century.” _Economics_, p. 230.

[505] Vol. VII. (1849) pp. 64-126, 340-404, and Vol. VIII. pp. 1-86,

270-339 of the _Dublin Quart. Journ. of Medical Science_, N. S. contain

numerous reports collected by the editors from all parts of Ireland, and

published either in abstract or in full. These are the chief medical

sources. Some particulars are given also in the _Dublin Med. Press_, 1846

to 1849 in several papers on dysentery.

[506] John Popham, M.D., _Dub. Quart. Journ. Med. Sc._ N. S. VIII. 279.

[507] Cited by Dr Jones Lamprey, _Dub. Quart. Journ._ VII. 101.

[508] Lamprey, _Dub. Quart. Journ._ VII. 101.

[509] O’Rourke.

[510] Ormsbey, _Dub. Quart. Journ._ VII. 382.

[511] Pemberton, _ibid._ VII. 369.

[512] Lalor, u. s.

[513] This epidemic called forth two pamphlets on the relation of famine

to fever, one by Dominic Corrigan, M.D., _On Famine and Fever as Cause and

Effect in Ireland_ (“no famine, no fever”), and a reply to it by H.

Kennedy, M.D., _On the Connexion of Famine and Fever_.

[514] Pains resembling those of rheumatism were common in the fever of

1817-18 at Limerick. Barker and Cheyne, I. 432.

[515] Lamprey, u. s.

[516] Dr Kelly of Mullingar compared the smell of relapsing fever to that

of burning musty straw. _Dub. Quart. Journ. Med._, Aug. 1863, p. 341.

[517] Cusack and Stokes, _ibid._ IV. 134.

[518] Barker and Cheyne, Harty, and Rogan have been cited to this effect

for earlier epidemics. Graves (_Clin. Med._ pp. 59-60) says: “In the

epidemics of 1816, 1817, 1818 and 1819, it was found by accurate

computation that the rate of mortality was much higher among the rich than

among the poor. This was a startling fact, and a thousand different

explanations of it were given at the time.” He cites Fletcher

(_Pathology_, p. 27) an Edinburgh observer, as follows: “The rich are less

frequently affected with epidemic fevers than the poor, but more

frequently die of them. Good fare keeps off diseases, but increases their

mortality when they take place.”

[519] _Dub. Quart. Journ. Med. Sc._ N. S. VII. 388.

[520] _Census of Ireland_, 1851.

[521] _The Census of Ireland of 1851._ Part V. Table of Deaths. 2 vols.

Dublin, 1856. Upwards of two hundred pages are occupied with a

chronological “Table of Cosmical Phenomena, Epizootics, Epiphitics,

Famines and Pestilences in Ireland” from the earliest times. This

retrospect, which is very replete but tedious and uncritical, is followed

by a summary report of twenty pages on “The Last General Potato Failure,

and the Great Famine and Pestilence of 1845-50,” and by a long series of

tabulated extracts from contemporary writings on all matters relating to

the famine.

[522] Of this total, 18,430 deaths were from dysentery and 7,264 from

diarrhoea.

[523] The increase in 1849 was doubtless owing to choleraic diarrhoea

during the epidemic of Asiatic cholera, the deaths from dysentery being

one-half of the total.

[524] R. Mayne, M.D., “Observations on the late Epidemic Dysentery in

Dublin.” _Dub. Quart. Journ. Med. Sc._ VII. 294. See also papers in _Dubl.

Med. Press_, 1849.

[525] 17th and 26th Reports of the Regr.-Genl. Ireland.

[526] Review of Murchison in _Dub. Quart. Journ. Med. Sc._, Aug. and Nov.

1863, pp. 169 and 339: “We are able, from extensive opportunities of

observing the epidemic [of 1846-48] in Dublin, to verify the statement of

Dr H. Kennedy as to the infrequency of enteric fever.”

[527] _Dub. Quart. Journ. Med. Sc._ Nov. 1865, p. 285.

[528] See p. 273, _supra_.

[529] O’Connor, u. s. p. 286, “Typhoid has scarcely appeared in this

locality, which cannot boast of the excellence of its sewerage.”

[530] “On Atmospheric Conditions influencing the Prevalence of Typhus

Fever.” _Dub. Quart. Journ. Med. Sc._, May, 1866, p. 309.

[531] H. Kennedy, M.D., “Further Observations on Typhus and Typhoid Fevers

as seen in Dublin.” _Ibid._, Aug. 1862, p. 50.

[532] Nearly one-half of all the enteric fever deaths in Ulster and

Leinster come respectively from Belfast and Dublin:

Year Belfast Dublin

1889 236 231

1890 190 168

1891 156 185

[533] Higden’s _Polychronicon_. Rolls Series, I. 332.

[534] _Dyall of Agues._ London, [1564].

[535] _Essay on Epidemic Diseases._ Dublin, 1734.

[536] _Dissert. Epistol._ § 93. Greenhill’s ed. p. 378.

[537] One regrets to find the above mistake in the learned pages of

Murchison (p. 8). The following by Dr Robert Williams (_Morbid Poisons_,

II. 423) is absolutely erroneous: “In Sydenham’s time, intermittent fever

and dysentery were constantly endemic in London; and the mortality from

the former cause alone averaged, in a comparatively small population, from

one to two thousand persons annually.” What Sydenham says is that

dysentery was endemic in Ireland (on the authority of Boate, no doubt),

that it was epidemic in London in the end of 1669 and in the three years

following, and that for the space of ten years it had appeared quite

sparingly (_quae per decennium jam parcius comparuerat_). As to

intermittents, he says they were absent from London for thirteen years,

from 1664 to 1677, except in sporadic or imported cases. In the London

bills the deaths from “agues” are sometimes distinguished from “fevers,”

and are then seen to be only some dozen or twenty in two thousand.

[538] It is used in the Latin title of an Edinburgh graduation thesis, “De

Catarrho epidemio, vel Influenza, prout in India occidentali sese

ostendit,” by J. Huggar, which is assigned in Häser’s bibliography to the

year 1703. Having been unable to find the thesis, I have not verified the

date.

[539] _Annales Monastici_ (St Albans), Rolls Series, No. 191, under the

year 1427; _Hist. MSS. Commiss._ IX. pt. 1, p. 127, records of Canterbury

Abbey.--An epidemic in Ireland a century before, in 1328, has been given

by Sir W. R. Wilde, and by Dr Grimshaw following him, under the name of

“murre,” as if that had been its name at the time. The explanation seems

to be that the contemporary Irish name _slaedan_ was rendered by

Macgeoghegan, in his translation of the Annals of Clonmacnoise, by the

15th century English term “murre.” The “mure” of 1427 was a universal

influenza; but the word was afterwards used for a common cold, along with

poss, as in Gardiner’s _Triall of Tabacco_, 1610, fol. 12 and 15:

“stuffings in the head, murres and pose, coughs”; and “the poze, murre,

horsenesse, cough” etc.

[540] _Cal. Cecil. MSS._ I. under the dates.

[541] Munk, _Roll of the College of Physicians_, I. 32.

[542] Cited in Southey’s _Commonplace Book_, from Fuller’s _Pisgah Sight_,

p. 54.

[543] Southey, _Commonplace Book_, from Strype’s _Memorials of Cranmer_,

p. 284.

[544] Thoresby, _Ducatus Leodiensis_, ed. Whitaker, App. p. 152.

[545] Baines, _Lancashire_, II. 679: 39 deaths from 17 to 24 August, 1551,

set down to “plague,” i.e. sweat.

[546] Lest it may be supposed that there has been adequate discussion of

the differences between epidemic agues and influenzas, I quote from

Hirsch’s _Handbuch der historisch-geographischen Pathologie_ the passage

in which these epidemics or pandemics of “malarial fever” are referred to:

“These epidemics of malaria, which extend not unfrequently over large

tracts of country, and sometimes even over whole divisions of the globe,

forming true pandemics, correspond always in time with a considerable

increase in the amount of sickness at the endemic malarious foci, whether

near or distant; they either die out after lasting a few months, or they

continue--and this applies particularly to the great pandemic

outbreaks--for several years, with regular fluctuations depending on

seasonal influences. On the very verge of the period to which the history

of malarial epidemics can be traced back, we meet with a pandemic of that

sort, in the years 1557 and 1558, which is said to have overrun all Europe

(Palmarius, _De morbis contagiosis_. Paris, 1578, p. 322).... It is not

until the years 1678-82 that we again meet with definite facts relating to

an epidemic extending over a great part of Europe....” (Eng. Transl. I.

229.)

[547] _Queen Elizabeth and her Times._ Ed. Wright, 2 vols. Lond. 1838, I.

113. Sir W. Cecil writing from Westminster to Sir T. Smith on 29th

December [1563] says: “The cold here hath so assayled us that the Queen’s

majestie hath been much troubled, and is yet not free from the same that I

had in November, which they call a pooss, and now this Christmas, to keep

her Majestie company, I have been newly so possessed with it as I could

not see, but with somewhat ado I wryte this. We have had perpetuall frosts

here sence the 16th of this month. Men doo now ordinarily pass over the

Thamiss, which I thynk they did not since the 8th yere of the reign of

King Henry the VIII.” _Ibid._ I. 157. For “poss,” see note p. 305.

[548] _Ephemer. Meteorol. anni 1561_ [for the latitude of Brabant].

Antwerp, 1561: “Tusses numero infinitae atque tanta contagionis vi

praestabunt ut pauci immunes reliquant, praecipuè circa mensis finem.” The

almanacks of those times must have been constructed on the same principle

as the weather forecasts of our own time--namely, that of using the

experience of one year for the next, just as the weather of one day is an

indication for the next. In 1575 Dr Richard Foster (who became president

of the College of Physicians in 1601) issued an almanack in which he

foretold “sweating fevers” for the month of July (_Ephemer. meteorol. ad

ann. 1575._ Lond. 1575). Cogan says that Francis Keene, an astronomer,

also prophesied the return of the sweating sickness in 1575, “wherein he

erred not much, as there were many strange fevers and nervous sickness.”

[549] Johan Boekel, Συνοψις _novi morbi quem plerique medicorum catarrhum

febrilem, vel febrem catarrhosam vocant, qui non solum Germaniam, sed

paene universam Europam graviss. adflixit_. Helmstadtii, 1580.

[550] Hoker’s “Irish historie ... to the present year 1587,” p. 165a in

Holinshed’s _Chronicles_.

[551] This very moderate increase of the deaths in London in 1580 may be

compared with the probably fabulous figures which Webster (I. 163) gives

for continental cities the same year: Rome, 4000 deaths, Lübeck, 8000

deaths, Hamburg, 3000 deaths. I have given the weekly deaths and baptisms

in London for five years, 1578-82, in my former volume, p. 341.

[552] There is a curious reference to “the sweat” in Shakespeare’s

_Measure for Measure_, Act I. scene 2, where the bawd, in an aside, says:

“Thus, what with the war, what with the sweat, what with the gallows, and

what with poverty, I am custom-shrunk.” It is known that Shakespeare

adapted and condensed his play from Whetstone’s _Promus and Cassandra_,

printed in 1578, who took it from an Italian romance. But Whetstone’s

dialogue, which is pointless and verbose beside Shakespeare’s, gives an

entirely different speech to the bawd at the same place in the action,

making no reference to “the sweat.” The date of _Measure for Measure_ is

not certain; but it seems to belong to the earlier period of Shakespeare’s

work, when he was adapting old plays most freely. Whatever its date, the

war, the sweat, the gallows and poverty are evidently topical allusions

pointed enough for the audience to have taken up.

[553] The year 1610 is mentioned by Short as a season of universal

catarrhal fever abroad; but that epidemic is not in the modern

chronologies of influenza.

[554] Chamberlain to Carleton in _Court and Times of James I._ I.

[555] Same to same 4 Nov. 1612. _Ibid._ I. p. 201.

[556] _Court and Times of James I._ I. p. 206.

[557] _Ibid._ p. 208.

[558] _Court and Times of James I._ p. 197.

[559] _Ibid._ p. 237.

[560] _Ibid._ Letter of 25 Nov. 1613.

[561] _Cal. Coke MSS._ I. 83.

[563] Graunt, _Obs. upon the Bills of Mortality_, 1662.

[564] Robert Boyle did not attach much importance to the name of “new

disease.” “The term _new disease_,” he says, “is much abused by the

vulgar, who are wont to give that title to almost every fever that, in

autumn especially, varies a little in its symptoms or other circumstances

from the fever of the foregoing year or season.” (Boyle’s _Works_. 6 vols.

1772, V. 66.) But it was the name commonly given to the epidemics of

catarrhal fever among others, and it does not appear, when the history is

examined closely, that it was ever given except to some epidemic separated

by several years from the last of the kind.

[565] Sir R. Leveson’s Letters. _Hist. MSS. Commiss._ V. 146.

[566] Pp. 568-577.

[567] Πυρετολογια _sive Gulielmi Dragei Hitchensis_ Ιατρου καὶ Φιλοσοφου

_Observationes ab Experientia de Febribus Intermittentibus_. Londini,

1665.

[568] His tract is dated 1641.

[569] By Nicholas Sudell, licentiate in physick and student in chimistry.

London, 1669.

[570] Πυρετολογια. _A rational account of the Cause and Cure of Agues,

with their signs, Diagnostick and Prognostick. Also some Specified

Medicines prescribed for the Cure of all sorts of Agues, &c. Whereunto is

added a short account of the Cause and Cure of Feavers and the Griping in

the Guts._ Authore Rto. Talbor, Pyretiatro. Londini, 1672.

[571] Sir Thomas Watson (_Practice of Physic_, I. 725) has a story which

shows how long these fancies, encouraged by quacks, may linger: “A

coachman by whose side I sat while travelling from Broadstairs to Margate

was speaking of the rarity of ague in that part of the Isle of Thanet. His

father, he said, once had the complaint, and a fit came on while he was on

a visit to him, the coachman, at Ramsgate. The son administered to his

suffering parent a glass of brandy; whereupon ‘he threw the agy off his

stomach; and it looked for all the world like a lump of jelly.’”

[572] Philip Guide, M.D., _A Kind Warning, &c._ Lond. 1710.

[573] The best summary of the “history of the use of Peruvian bark” is by

Sir George Baker, in _Trans. Col. Phys._ III. (1785), 173.

[574] Cited by Baker, _l. c._ p. 190.

[575] _Lives of the Norths._ New ed. by Jessopp. Lond. 1890, III. 188.

[576] He fell into a kind of decline and died at his country house on 5

September, Dr Radcliffe having been summoned from London without avail.

[577] Baker, _l. c._, “Had not physicians been taught by a man whom they,

both abroad and at home, vilified as an ignorant empiric, we might at this

day have had a powerful instrument in our hands without knowing how to use

it in the most effectual manner.” This was written at a time when

physicians spoke of “throwing in the bark”--throwing it in “with a

shovel,” as an Edinburgh professor used to say.

[578] John Barker, M.D., of Sarum, and afterwards physician to the forces,

says in 1742 (in his essay on the epidemic fever of 1741, u. s. p. 112)

that he had Sydenham’s letter in manuscript before him, and that it was

written in October, 1677.

[579] Cited by Baker, _Trans. Col. Phys._ III. 208.

[580] Beaufort MSS. _Histor. MSS. Com._ XII. App. 9, p. 85.

[581] Evelyn’s _Diary_, under the date of 29 Nov. 1694.

[582] Evelyn; Luttrell, I. 327.

[583] _Hist. MSS. Com._ V. 186. Sutherland correspondence.

[584] _The Diary of John Evelyn_, under the date 4 Feb. 1685.

[585] The popular imagination at the time appears to have been most

impressed by Dr King’s promptitude in whipping out his lancet. Roger North

must have had it incorrectly in his mind when he wrote: “About the time of

the death of Charles II., it grew a fashion to let blood frequently, out

of an opinion that it would have saved his life if done in time.”

[586] _Obs. Med._ 3rd ed. 1675, V. 5.

[587] Ralph Thoresby, _Ducatus Leodiensis_, ed. Whitaker, App. p. 151.

Brand, _Hist. of Newcastle_, under the year 1675, says that “the jolly

rant” caused 724 deaths in that town, the authority given being Jabez Cay,

M.D., who left his papers to Thoresby. The number given is probably the

mortality from all causes.

[588] Patrick Walker’s _Life of Cargill_, pp. 29, 30.

[589] _Synopsis Nosologiae._ 3rd ed. Edin. 1780, II. 173.

[590] _Epist. respons. ad R. Brady_, § 42.

[591] Luttrell (_Diary_, I. 23) enters under Oct. 1629: “About the middle

of this month vast great rains fell which have been very prejudiciall to

many persons.”

[592] Christopher Love Morley, M.D., _De Morbo Epidemico tam hujus quam

superioris Anni, id est 1678 et 1679 Narratio_. Preface dated London, 31

Dec. 1679.

[593] Lady Chaworth to Lord Roos, _Calendar of the Belvoir MSS._ II. 47.

[594] _Lives of the Norths. Ed. cit._ III. 143.

[595] Luttrell’s _Historical Relation_. Oxford, 1857, I. 19.

[596] Luttrell, _loc. cit._ I. 20, 21, 44.

[597] On 16 March, the illness of “little Frank ... hath made me suspect

some kind of aguish distemper; but, if it be, it is so little that we

neither perceive coming nor going.” On 7 July, another child is recovered

of her feverish distemper. On 5 October, “all my little ones are very

well, but some of my servants have quartan agues.” _Lives of the Norths_,

Letters of Anne, Lady North.

[598] An authentic case of these lingering epidemic agues was that of John

Evelyn in the beginning of 1683. On 7th February, 1687, he writes: “Having

had several violent fits of an ague, recourse was had to bathing my legs

in milk up to the knees, made as hot as I could endure it; and sitting so

in a deep churn or vessel, covered with blankets, and drinking carduus

posset, then going to bed and sweating. I not only missed that expected

fit, but had no more, only continued weak that I could not go to church

till Ash Wednesday, which I had not missed, I think, so long in twenty

years”--in fact, since his “double tertian” in 1660, which kept him in bed

from 17th February to 5th April.

[599] Ralph Thoresby caught it at Rotterdam, suffered from it, in the

tertian form, for several weeks of October and November, 1678, and brought

it home with him to Leeds. He gives a good account of the illness in his

_Diary_ (2 vols. Lond. 1830).

[600] _The History of this present Fever, with its two products, the

Morbus Cholera and the Gripes._ By W. Simpson, Doctor in Physick. London,

1678.

[601] _Cal. Belvoir MSS._ II. 120. June, 1688. Bridget Noel to the

Countess of Rutland.

[602] Walter Harris, M.D., _De morbis acutis infantum_. Lond. 1689.

English transl. by Cockburn, 1693, p. 88.

[603] “Historical Account of the late General Coughs and Colds, with some

Observations on other Epidemical Distempers.” _Phil. Trans._ XVIII.

(1694), p. 109.

[604] “’Twas very remarkable that in England as well as this kingdom a

short time before the general fever, a slight disease, but very universal,

seized the horses too: in them it showed itself by a great defluxion of

rheum from their noses; and I was assured by a judicious man, an officer

in the army of Ireland, which was then drawn out and encamped on the

Curragh of Kildare, there were not ten horses in a regiment that had not

this disease.” Molyneux, u. s.

[605] Evelyn says nothing of a great epidemic cold in this season, but

makes the following remarks on the weather: “Oct. 31. A very wet and

uncomfortable season. Nov. 12. The season continued very wet, as it had

nearly all the summer, if one might call it summer, in which there was no

fruit, but corn was very plentiful.”

[606] Molyneux, _Phil. Trans._ XVIII. (1694), p. 105.

[607] “An universal cold that appeared in 1708, and was immediately

preceded by a very sudden transition from heat to cold in Dublin and its

vicinity.” Molyneux’s _Memoirs_.

[608] _La Grippe_ may, of course, be taken literally to mean seizure; but

the common use of the word seems to have been figurative for some fancy

that seized many at once and became the fashion.

[609] Joannes Turner, M.D., _De Febre Britannica Anni 1712_. Lond. 1713,

pp. 3, 4.

[610] Mead, _Short Discourse concerning Pestilential Contagion_. Lond.

1720, p. 8. But Short, who wrote in 1749, places the “Dunkirk rant” under

the year 1710: (_Air, Weather, &c._ I. 455).--“March 1, began and reigned

two months an epidemic which missed few, and raged fatally like a plague

in France and the Low Countries, and was brought by disbanded soldiers

into England, namely a catarrhous fever called the Dunkirk rant or Dunkirk

ague.... It lasted eight, ten, or twelve days. Its symptoms were a severe,

short, dry cough, quick pulse, great pain of the head and over the whole

body, moderate thirst, and sweating. Diuretics were the cure.”

[611] “The effects and evidences of God’s displeasure appearing more and

more against us since the incorporating union [1707], mingling ourselves

with the people of these abominations, making ourselves liable to their

judgments, of which we are deeply sharing; particularly in that sad stroke

and great distress upon many families and persons, of the burning agues,

fevers never heard of before in Scotland to be universal and mortal.”

_Life and Death of Alexander Peden._ 3rd ed. 1728. _Biog. Presb._ I. 140.

[612] Boyle’s _Works_. Ed. 1772, V. 725.

[613] _Ibid._ V. 49.

[614] _Scotia Illustrata._ Edin. 1684. Lib. II. “De Morbis,” p. 52.

[615] _Commentar. Nosolog._ Lond. 1727.

[616] _The Method and Manner of curing the late raging Fevers, and of the

danger, uncertainly and unwholesomeness of the Jesuit’s bark._ Dated 6

Dec. 1728: “You see that intermitting fevers, when they come to be

chronical (and you may see it almost everywhere) make room for a great

many distempers, and those very difficult to cure.” p. 49.

[617] _An Enquiry into the Causes of the Present Epidemical Diseases, viz.

Fevers, Coughs, Asthmas, Rheumatisms, Defluxions, &c._ By the author of

“The Family Companion for Health.” London, 1729, pp. 6, 7.

[618] “Variations of the weather and Epid. Diseases, 1726-34 at Ripon.”

Appendix to _Essay on the Smallpox_. Lond. 1740, p. 35.

[619] _Comment. Nosol._ p. 142.

[620] This epidemic appears to have made a much greater impression in

Italy. The _Political State of Great Britain_ for 1730, p. 172, under the

date of 12th January, N. S. speaks of “the influenza, a strange and

universal sickness and lingering distemper,” as causing thirty deaths a

day in the public hospital of Milan, as well as fatalities at Rome,

Bologna, Ferrara and Leghorn, including the deaths of two cardinals.

[621] _Chronological History_, p. 10.

[622] _Edinburgh Medical Essays and Observations_, II. p. 22, Art. 2. “An

Account of the Diseases that were most frequent last year in Edinburgh”

(June, 1832 to May, 1833): There had been tertian agues throughout the

month of June, 1732, and from August to October an epidemic in the suburbs

and villages near Edinburgh, of a slow fever, having symptoms like the

“comatose” fever of Sydenham, or the remittent of children.

[623] _Op. cit._ p. 47.

[624] John Arbuthnot, M.D., _Essay concerning the Effects of Air on Human

Bodies_. London, 1733, p. 193. His remarks upon the “hysteric” maladies

that were common after the wave of influenza in Jan.-Feb. 1733, are

referred to in the chapter on Continued Fevers, along with the

corresponding information from Hillary, of Ripon.

[625] _Gent. Magaz._ 1733, Jan. p. 43.

[626] Huxham, _Obs. de aere et morbis epidemicis_, 1728-52, _Plymuthi

factae_.

[627] _De Aere, &c._ pp. 3, 136-8.

[628] Rutty, _Chronol. Hist. of Diseases in Dublin_. Lond. 1770.

[629] Pringle, _Diseases of the Army_, p. 16.

[630] _Letters of Horace Walpole_, ed. Cunningham, I. 235.

[631] _Gent. Magaz._ XIII. May 1743, p. 272.

[632] R. Chambers, _Domestic Annals of Scotland_, III. 610.

[633] Rutty, u. s. under the year 1743. In an earlier passage, he says

that the influenza of 1743 raised the Dublin weekly bills to a highest

point of 67, so that it must have been very slight in that city.

[634] Huxham, _Obs. de aere etc._, 2nd ed. 3 vols. Lond. 1752-70, II. 99.

[635] W. Watson, _Phil. Trans._ LII. 646.

[636] _Cleghorn, Observations on the Epidemical Diseases in Minorca,

1744-49_, p. 132.

[637] This influenza was observed in the North American Colonies. It is

noteworthy that Huxham, of Plymouth, records under October, 1752, that

hundreds of people at once had cough, sore throat, defluxions from the

nose, eyes and mouth, attended with a slight fever, and more or less of a

rash, several having a great flux of the belly.--_On Ulcerous Sore

Throat_, 1757, p. 13.

[638] W. Hillary, M.D., _Obs. on ... Epid. Diseases in Barbadoes_. Lond.

1760.

[639] It is not described for England, unless a reference by Bisset for

Cleveland, Yorkshire, should apply to it. Short says, under the year 1758

(_Increase and Decrease of Mankind in England, &c._ 1767): A healthy year

in general, “only in the harvest was a very sickly mortal time among the

poor, of a putrid slow fever, which carried off many. An epidemic catarrh

broke out in November, and made a sudden sweep over the whole kingdom.”

Barker, of Coleshill, says, in his _Putrid Constitution of 1777_

(Birmingham, 1779, p. 49): “In the remarkable intermittents of 1758 or 9

... the early and consequently injudicious use of the bark was attended

with such fatal effects that a few doses only sometimes totally oppressed

the head, brought on a most rapid delirium, and cut off persons in

half-an-hour.”

[640] Robert Whytt, M.D., “On the Epidemic Disorder of 1758 in Edinburgh

and other parts of the South of Scotland.” _Med. Obs. and Inq. by a

Society of Physicians_, 6 vols. Lond. II. (1762), p. 187. With notices by

Millar, of Kelso, and Alves, of Inverness.

[641] Archibald Smith, M.D., “Notices of the Epidemics of 1719-20 and 1759

in Peru,” &c. from the Medical Gazette of Lima, on the authority of Don

Antonio de Ulloa. _Trans. Epid. Soc._ II. pt. 1, p. 134.

[642] Horace Walpole’s _Letters_, ed. Cunningham, III. 281.

[643] C. Bisset, _Essay on the Medical Constitution of Great Britain, 1

Jan. 1758, to Midsummer 1760_. Lond. 1762, p. 279.

[644] Extract from the parish register printed by Dr G. B. Longstaff in an

appendix to his _Studies in Statistics_. Lond. 1891, p. 443.

[645] _Increase and Decrease of Mankind in England &c._ London, 1767.

[646] Rutty, _op. cit._ p. 275. Compare Watson, _supra_, p. 351.

[647] G. Baker, _De Catarrho et de Dysenteria Londinensi epidemicis,

1762_, Lond. 1764; W. Watson, “Some remarks upon the Catarrhal Disorder

which was very frequent in London in May 1762, and upon the Dysentery

which prevailed in the following autumn.” _Phil. Trans._ LII. (1762), p.

646.

[648] Professor Alexander Monro, _primus_, of Edinburgh, describes his own

attack in a letter to his son, Dr Donald Monro, 11 June, 1766 (_Works of

Alex. Monro, M.D. with Life_, Edin. 1781, p. 306): “My case is this: in

May, 1762, I had the epidemic influenza, which affected principally the

parts in the pelvis; for I had a difficulty and sharp pain in making water

and going to stool. My belly has never since been in a regular way,

passing sometimes for several days nothing but bloody mucus, and that with

considerable tenesmus” &c. Dysentery was epidemic in 1762 as well as

influenza.

[649] Donald Monro, M.D., _Diseases of the British Military Hospitals in

Germany, &c._ Lond. 1764, p. 137.

[650] _Med. Trans. published by the College of Physicians in London_, I.

437. Heberden’s paper was read at the College, Aug. 11, 1767.

[651] The nearest approach to Heberden’s London influenza of 1767 is an

epidemic that Sims observed in Tyrone in the autumn of 1767; a season

remarkable for measles and acute rheumatism. At the same time that the

acute rheumatism prevailed, a fever showed itself, like it; the patients

for two or three days were languid, chilly, with pains in the bones,

headache, stupor, dry tongue, costiveness. It was marked by remissions,

was by no means mortal, and usually ended by a sweat from the 14th to the

17th day, followed by a copious deposit in the urine. James Sims, _Obs. on

Epidemic Disorders_, Lond. 1773, p. 84.

[652] Anthony Fothergill, _Mem. Med. Soc._ III. 30. This paper is not

included in John Fothergill’s series. There is also a separate Dublin

essay, _Advice to the People upon the Epidemic Catarrhal Fever of Oct.

Nov. Dec. 1775_. By a Physician.

[653] I have not found the weekly bills for this year in London; but the

following averages, taken from the four-weekly or five-weekly totals in

the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, will show how slight the rise was:

1775. October weekly average 323 births 345 deaths

November " " 334 " 447 "

December " " 369 " 449 "

[654] W. Grant, M.D., _Observations on the late Influenza as it appeared

at London in 1775 and 1782_. Lond. 1782. Also, by the same, _A Short

Account of the Present Epidemic Cough and Fever, in a letter &c._ First

printed at Bath, and afterwards at London, 1776.

[655] MS. Infirmary Book.

[656] The reports collected by Dr John Fothergill (_Med. Obs. and Inquir._

VI. 340) were by himself, and by Pringle, Baker, Heberden and Reynolds, of

London; Cuming, of Dorchester; Glass, of Exeter (long account): Ash, of

Birmingham; White, of York; Haygarth, of Chester; Pulteney, of Blandford;

Thomson, of Worcester; Skene, of Aberdeen; and Campbell, of Lancaster. The

papers of this collective inquiry, as well as the two collections in 1782,

the collection of Simmonds in 1788, that of Beddoes in 1803 (in a digest)

and the Report of the Provincial Medical Association in 1837, together

with some other extracts from books or papers, were brought together in a

volume, without much editing, by Dr Theophilus Thompson, under the title

of _The Annals of Influenza in Great Britain from 1510 to 1837_. London,

1852. This has been reprinted and brought down to date by Dr Symes

Thompson, 1891.

[657] _Mem. Med. Soc._ III. 34.

[658] _Life of Sir Robert Christison_, 2 vols. Edin. 1885, vol. I.

(Autobiography), p. 82.

[659] For the year 1730, under the date 12 January, p. 172.

[660] “An Account of the Epidemic Catarrh of the Year 1782; compiled at

the request of a Society for promoting Medical Knowledge.” By Edward Gray,

M.D., F.R.S., _Medical Communications_, I. (1784), p. 1.

[661] “An Account of the Epidemic Disease called the _Influenza_, of the

Year 1782, collected from the observations of several physicians in London

and in the Country; by a Committee of the Fellows of the Royal College of

Physicians in London.” _Medical Transactions published by the Coll. of

Phys. in London_, III. (1785), p. 54. Read at the College, June 25, 1783.

[662] John Clark, M.D., _On the Influenza at Newcastle_. Dated 26 May,

1782; Arthur Broughton, _The Influenza or Epid. Catarrh in Bristol in

1782_. London, 1782; W. Falconer, _Account of the Influenza at Bath in

May-June, 1782_. Bath, 1782.

[663] Gregory, cited by Christison, _Life &c._ I. 84: “I have been told of

the haymakers attempting to struggle with the sense of fatigue, but being

obliged in a few minutes to lay down their scythes and stretch themselves

on the field.”

[664] Gray, u. s. p. 107.

[665] _The London Medical Journal_, III. (1783), 318.

[666] College of Physicians’ Report: “A family which came in the Leeward

Islands fleet in the end of September, 1782, was attacked by it in the

beginning of October. This family afterwards told the physician who

attended them that several of their acquaintances, who came over in the

same fleet with them, had been attacked at the same time and in the same

manner as themselves.”

[667] He had another experience not quite the rule: “Children and old

people either escaped this influenza entirely, or were affected in a

slight manner.”

[668] R. Hamilton, M.D., “Some Remarks on the Influenza in Spring, 1782,”

_Mem. Med. Soc._ II. 422. This author had some difficulty in deciding

where the influenza ended and the epidemic ague began.

[669] _Trans. Col. Phys._ “On the late Intermittent Fevers,” III. 141.

Read at the College, 10 Jan., 1785.

[670] _Ibid._ p. 168.

[671] _Febris Anomala, or the New Disease._ Lond. 1659, p. 1.

[672] “Remarks on the Treatment of Intermittents, as they occurred at

Hampstead in the Spring of 1781.” By Thomas Hayes, Surgeon. _Lond. Med.

Journ._ II. 267.

[673] _Epidemicks_ (1777-95), pp. 58, 72, 75, &c. Barker’s annals from

1779 to 1786 are full of references to agues, “bad burning fevers” and the

like, but are on the whole too confused to be of much use for history. See

the Boston bills under Smallpox.

[674] W. Moss, _Familiar Medical Survey of Liverpool_. Liverpool, 1784, p.

117. This writer’s object is to show that Liverpool escaped most of the

epidemic diseases that troubled other places, including typhus fever. As

to the influenzas he says: “The influenza of 1775, so universal and very

fatal in many parts, was less fatal here; and also that much slighter

complaint, distinguished by the same title, which appeared in the spring

of 1783.”

[675] _Gent. Magaz._ LIII. pt. 2, p. 920. Letter dated from “Pontoon.”

[676] William Coley, _Account of the late Epidemic Ague in the

neighbourhood of Bridgenorth, Shropshire, in 1784 ... to which are added

some observations on a Dysentery that prevailed at the same time_. Lond.

1785.

[677] Baker, u. s.

[678] “An Account of the Effects of Arsenic in Intermittents.” By J. C.

Jenner, surgeon at Painswick, Gloucestershire. _Lond. Med. Journ._ IX.

(1788), p. 47.

[679] _Ibid._ VII. (1786), p. 163.

[680] Table compiled by Dr Mackenzie, and printed by Christison, _Trans.

Soc. Sc. Assoc._ Edin. Meeting, 1863, p. 97. Christison pointed out very

fairly the difficulties in the way of accepting the drainage-theory for

the decline of ague (p. 98), but he had not realized the fact that the

disease used to come in epidemics at long intervals.

[681] e.g. parish of Dron, Perthshire (IX. 468): “The return of spring and

autumn never failed to bring along with them this fatal disease [ague],

and frequently laid aside many of the labouring hands at a time when their

work was of the greatest consequence and necessity.” That had now ceased,

owing to drainage. See also Cramond parish, I. 224, and Arngask,

Perthshire, I. 415.

[682] The following extracts are from Barker’s book, _Epidemicks_,

Birmingham [1795]: 1782. Influenza in the latter end of spring. Nine out

of ten in Lichfield and other towns had violent defluxions of the nose,

throat and lungs, bringing on violent sneezings, soreness of the throat,

coughs, &c. attended with a pestilential fever, of which many were

relieved by perspiration.... Some had swelled faces, and violent pains in

the teeth.... Some, giddiness and violent headaches, accompanied with a

slow fever, and even loss of memory.... By its running through whole

families it appeared also to be communicable by infection.

1783. The influenza also began to appear again; and those who had coughs

last year began now to be afflicted with them again, the disorder at

length frequently ending in a consumption. Also dogs in this year and the

next had running at the eyes and a loss of the use of their hind legs,

which in the end killed most of those that were seized with it. Horses

also suffered.

1786. In the middle of this season the influenza returned, and colds and

coughs were epidemical.

1788 [spring]. A species of influenza of the pestilential kind, akin to

that of 1782, has almost constantly returned in spring and autumn since

that time ... [summer] A species of influenza, as in the spring, and it is

also at Edinburgh.

1789 [spring]. Influenza returned. Even dogs affected.

1791. Influenza very bad, especially in London.

[683] Samuel Foart Simmons, M.D., F.R.S., “Of the Epidemic Catarrh of the

year 1788.” _Lond. Med. Journ._ IX. (1788), p. 335.

[684] Vaughan May, surgeon to H. M. Ordnance, “Observations on the

Influenza as it appeared at Plymouth, in the summer and autumn of the year

1788.” Duncan’s _Med. Commentaries_, Decade 2, vol. iv. p. 363.

[685] Falconer, “Influenzae Descriptio, uti nuper comparebat in urbe

Bathoniae, mensibus Julio, Augusto et Septembri A.D. 1788.” _Mem. Med.

Soc._ III. 25.

[686] George Bew, M.D., physician at Manchester, “Of the Epidemic Catarrh

of the year 1788.” _Lond. Med. Journ._ IX. (1788), p. 354. “The influenza

has been _very_ prevalent,” writes Withering, of Birmingham, to Lettsom,

19 Aug. 1788. _Mem. of Lettsom_, III. 133.

[687] Related to Dr Simmons (1. c. p. 346), by Mr Boys, surgeon, of

Sandwich, who was told it by his son, a lieutenant on board the ‘Rose.’

[688] In a note to Simmons’ paper, u. s., p. 342.

[689] “An Account of an Epidemic Fever that prevailed in Cornwall in the

year 1788.” _Lond. Med. Journal_, X. p. 117 (dated Truro, Jan. 26, 1789).

[690] Bew, u. s., p. 365. Carmichael Smyth has a similar remark on the

influenza of 1782: “This epidemic distemper very soon declined. But it

seemed to leave behind it an epidemical constitution which prevailed

during the rest of the summer; and the fevers, even in the end of August

and beginning of September, assumed a type resembling, in many respects,

the fever accompanying the influenza.”

[691] A solitary reference occurs to an influenza in 1792, which I have

not succeeded in verifying:--B. Hutchinson, “An Account of the Epidemic

Disease commonly called the Influenza, which appeared in Nottinghamshire

and most other parts of the kingdom in the months of November and

December, 1792.” _New. Lond. Med. Journ._, Lond. 1793, II. 174. Cited in

the Washington Medical Catalogue.

[692] Robert Willan, M.D., _Reports on the Diseases in London,

particularly during the years 1796, ’97, ’98, ’99 and 1800_. London, 1801,

pp. 76, 253.

[693] Published in the _Med. and Phys. Journal_ from August to December,

1803.

[694] _Memoirs of the Medical Society_, vol. VI.

[695] R. Hooper, M.D., _Obs. on the Epidemic Disease now prevalent in

London_. London, 1803. R. Pearson, M.D., _Obs. on the Epid. Catarrhal

Fever or Influenza of 1803_. Lond. 1803.

[696] J. Herdman, _The prevailing Epid. Disease termed Influenza_. Edin.

1803.

[697] W. Falconer, M.D., _The Epidemic Catarrhal Fever commonly called the

Influenza, as it appeared at Bath &c._ Bath, 1803.

[698] John Nott, M.D., _Influenza as it prevailed in Bristol in

Feb.-April, 1803_. Bristol, 1803.

[699] _Med. and Phys. Journ._ X. 104.

[700] Dr Currie of Chester, _Med. and Phys. Journ._ X. 213.

[701] _Ib._ X. 527, quoted by Beddoes from memory, the letter from Navan

having been lost.

[702] Alvey, _Mem. Med. Soc._ VI. 462.

[703] Dr Carrick, of Bristol, in Duncan’s _Annals of Med._ III. Compare

the report for Fraserburgh in 1775, supra, p. 360.

[704] Frazer, _Med. and Phys. Journ._ X. 206, dated 12 June, 1803.

[705] Hirsch cites authorities for influenza in Edinburgh, London,

Nottingham and Newcastle in the winter of 1807-8. In Roberton’s monthly

reports from Edinburgh (_Med. and Phys. Journ._ XXI.), and Bateman’s

quarterly reports from London, I find only common colds recorded. Clarke

for Nottingham (_Ed. Med. Surg. Journ._ IV. 429) says catarrh was so

general “as to have acquired the name of influenza; but there was no

reason to suppose it contagious.”

[706] W. Royston, “On a Medical Topography,” _Med. and Phys. J._ XXI.

1809, (Dec. 1808), p. 92: “After the unusual heat of the last summer, the

frequency of intermittents in the autumn was increased in the fens of

Cambridgeshire to an almost unprecedented degree; and even quadrupeds were

not exempt, for distinctly marked cases of _tertian_ were observed in

horses. In the year 1780 a similar prevalence of this disease occurred in

the same part; and though in an interval of 28 years many and frequent

sporadic cases have arisen, yet its universality during that period was

suspended. We have to regret that a correct record of the constitution of

the year 1780, as applying to this particular district, has not been

preserved in such a manner as to admit of a direct comparison with that of

1808. If it were possible, from authentic documents to compare the history

of these two seasons, much light might be thrown on the obscure cause of

intermittents.” Clarke, of Nottingham, (l. c.) says there were some cases

of irregular ague among a few privates of the regiment there, who had all

come from a marshy quarter, some of them with the fever on them. The

paroxysms came at unusually long intervals. Bark increased the fever.

[707] Lecture on Agues, in the _Lond. Med. Gaz._ IX. 923-4, 24 March,

1832.

[708] _Lancet_, s. d., p. 438.

[709] _Lond. Med. Gazette_, 2 July, 1831.

[710] John Burne, M.D., _Ibid._ VIII. (1831), p. 430.

[711] G. Bennett, _Lond. Med. Gaz._ 23 July, 1831.

[712] Bellamy, _Ibid._

[713] “Report of Diseases among the Poor of Glasgow,” _Glas. Med. Journ._

IV. 444.

[714] McDerment, _ibid._ V. 230: “In June and July to an extent

unequalled” etc.

[715] During the last general election before the passing of the Reform

Bill, which was held in the month of June, 1831, a number of the Aberdeen

radicals went out on a hot and dusty day to meet the candidate of their

party who was posting from the south. It was remarked that all those who

had been of this company “caught cold,” unaccountably but as if from some

common cause. The date would correspond to the prevalence of influenza

elsewhere.

[716] Mr Kingdon, reported in the _Lancet_, s. d.

[717] Venables, _Lancet_, II. May, 1833.

[718] Hingeston, _Lond. Med. Gaz._ XII. 199.

[719] _Gent. Magaz._, April, 1833, p. 362.

[720] Whitmore, _Febris anomala, or the New Disease, etc._, London, 1659,

p. 109:--“And for a plethora or fulness of blood, if that appears (though

this may seem a paradox yet ’tis certain) that it is so far in this

disease from indicating bleeding that it stands absolutely as a

contradiction to it and vehemently prohibits it. And whereas they think

the heat, by bleeding, may be abated and so the feaver took off, they are

mistook, for by that means the fermentation through the motion of the

blood is highly increased, so as sad experience hath manifested in a great

many: upon the bleeding they have within a day or two fallen delirious and

had their tongues as black as soot, with an intolerable thirst and drought

upon them.... Petrus a Castro, who rants high for letting blood, at last

as if he had been humbled with the sad success, saith etc.”

[721] _A System of Clinical Medicine_, Dublin, 1843, pp. 500-501. Lecture

delivered in the session 1834-35.

[722] Rawlins, _Lond. Med. Gaz._ s. d.

[723] _Ed. Med. Surg. Journ._ XLIII. 1835, p. 26.

[724] Parsons, “Report of Outcases, Birmingham Infirmary, 1 Jan. to 31

Dec. 1833.” _Trans. Provin. Med. Surg. Assoc._ II. 474.

[725] In the report upon the influenza of 1837 by a Committee of the

Provincial Medical Association, the preceding epidemic is uniformly

referred to the year 1834. Graves, in a clinical lecture upon that of

1837, speaks two or three times of the last as that of 1834, and, in

another place, he calls it the epidemic of 1833-34. But these, I think,

are mere laxities of dating, of which there are many other instances where

the date is recent and not yet historical.

[726] As early as 1612 a proposal had been made to James I. for “a grant

of the general registrarship of all christenings, marriages and burials

within this realm.” _State Papers_, Rolls House, Ja. I. vol. LXIX. No. 54.

It was a device for raising money.

[727] The account in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for February, 1837, p.

199, is almost identical with the paragraph in the number for April, 1833:

“An influenza of a peculiar character has been raging throughout the

country, and particularly in the Metropolis. It has been attended by

inflammation of the throat and lungs, with violent spasms, sickness and

headache. So general have been its effects that business in numerous

instances has been entirely suspended. The greater number of clerks at the

War Office, Admiralty, Navy Pay Office, Stamp Office, Treasury,

Post-Office and other Government Offices have been prevented from

attending to their daily avocations.... Of the police force there were

upwards of 800 incapable of doing duty. On Sunday the 13th the churches

which have generally a full congregation presented a mournful scene &c.

... the number of burials on the same day in the different cemeteries was

nearly as numerous as during the raging of the cholera in 1832 and 1833.

In the workhouses the number of poor who have died far exceed any return

that has been made for the last thirty years.”

[728] Graves, u. s., p. 545.

[729] Robert Cowan, M.D., _Journ. Stat. Soc._ III. 257.

[730] Peyton Blakiston, _A Treatise on the Influenza of 1837, containing

an analysis of one hundred cases observed at Birmingham between 1 Jan. and

15 Feb._ Lond. 1837.

[731] These and some former particulars are from the “Report upon the

Influenza or Epidemic Catarrh of the winter of 1836-37,” compiled by Robt.

J. N. Streeten, M.D. for the Committee of the Provincial Medical

Association. _Trans. Prov. Med. Assoc._ VI. 501.

[732] Streeten’s Report, u. s., p. 505.

[733] _Statist. Report on Health of Navy_, 1837-43.

[734] Jackson, _Dubl. Med. Press_, VIII. 69; Brady, _Dubl. Journ. Med.

Sc._ XX. (1842), 76.

[735] Laycock, _Dubl. Med. Press_, VII. 234. Several cases of sudden and

great enlargement of the liver and of suppression of urine were judged to

be part of the epidemic.

[736] Ross, _Lancet_, 1845, I. p. 2.

[737] Report of Holywood Dispensary for 1842, _Dublin Med. Press_, IX.

204.

[738] Hall, _Prov. Med. Journ._ 1844, p. 315.

[739] M’Coy, _Med. Press_, XI. 133.

[740] Fleetwood Churchill, _Dubl. Quart. Journ._, May, 1847, p. 373.

[741] Farr, in _Rep. Reg.-Gen._

[742] Farr, in the _Report of the Registrar-General for 1848_. He cites

(p. xxxi) Stark for Scotland, that it “suddenly attacked great masses of

the population twice during November”--on the 18th, and again on the 28th.

[743] A curious trace of the temporary interest excited by influenza in

1847-8 remains in a great book of the time, Carlyle’s _Letters and

Speeches of Cromwell_, the third edition of which, with new letters, was

then under hand. One of the new letters related to the death of Colonel

Pickering from the camp-sickness among the troops of Fairfax at Ottery St

Mary in December, 1645. Carlyle’s comment is: “has caught the epidemic

‘new disease’ as they call it, some ancient _influenza_ very prevalent and

fatal during those wet winter operations.” “New disease” was the name

given by Greaves to the war-typhus in Oxfordshire and Berkshire in 1643,

but neither that nor the sickness at Ottery (which is not called “new

disease” in the documents) had anything of the nature of influenza.

[744] But Dr Rose Cormack, who had known relapsing fever well in

Edinburgh, wrote from Putney, near London, in October, 1849: “For some

months past the majority of cases of all diseases in this neighbourhood

have ... presented a well-marked tendency to assume the remittent and

intermittent types.” “Infantile Remittent Fever,” _Lond. Journ. of Med._,

Oct. 1849, reprinted in his _Clinical Studies_, 2 vols., 1876.

[745] T. B. Peacock, M.D., _On the Influenza, or Epidemic Catarrhal Fever

of 1847-8_. London, 1848.

[746] Haviland, _Journ. Pub. Health_, IV. 288, (94 cases in June-Aug. in a

village).

[747] See F. Clemow, M.D., of St Petersburg, “The Recent Pandemic of

Influenza: its place of origin and mode of spread.” _Lancet_, 20 Jan. and

10 Feb. 1894. These papers bring together and discuss the Russian

opinions, official and other. The Army Medical Report favoured the view

that the birthplace of this pandemic in the autumn of 1889 was an

extensive region occupied by nomadic tribes in the northern part of the

Kirghiz Steppe. There is evidence of its rapid progress westwards over

Tobolsk to the borders of European Russia. Influenza is said to be

constantly present in many parts of the Russian Empire; but the

circumstances that have, on four or five occasions in the 19th century,

set the infection rolling in a great wave westwards from the assumed

source are wholly unknown.

[748] The collective inquiry on the epidemics was made by the medical

department of the Local Government Board, the result being given in two

reports: _Report on the Influenza Epidemic of 1889-90, Parl. Papers_,

1891, and _Further Report and Papers on Epidemic Influenza, 1889-92, Parl.

Papers_, Sept. 1893. By H. Franklin Parsons, M.D. Statistical tables

comparing the epidemics in London with those in some other capitals were

published by F. A. Dixey, M.D., _Epidemic Influenza_, Oxford, 1892.

[749] The notable difference between the type of this epidemic and that of

the epidemics of 1833, 1837 and 1847, from which the conventional notion

of “influenza cold” was derived, is perhaps the explanation of the

following apt and erudite remark by Buchanan, on “influenza proper,” in

his introduction to the first departmental report, 1891: “It would be no

small gain to get more authentic methods of identifying influenza proper

from among the various grippes, catarrhs, colds and the like--in man,

horse, and other animals--that take to themselves the same popular title”

(p. xi).

[750] The volume by Julius Althaus, M.D., _Influenza: its Pathology,

Complications and Sequelae_, 2nd ed., Lond. 1892, includes a summary and

bibliography of recent observations.

[751] Noah Webster, _Brief History of Epidemick Diseases_, I. 288; Warren,

of Boston, to Lettsom, 30 May, 1790, _Lettsom’s Memoirs_, III. 238:

“whether this [the second] is a variety of influenza, or a new disease

with us, I am at a loss to determine.”

[752] In Twysden’s _Decem Scriptores_, col. 579.

[753] Boyle’s _Works_, 6 vols., London, 1772, V. 52.

[754] Seneca, _Nat. Quaest._ § 27, cited by Webster. After earthquakes,

“subitae continuaeque mortes, et monstrosa genera morborum ut ex novis

orta causis.” The passage cited from Baglivi (p. 530) looks like a

repetition of this: “imo nova et inaudita morborum genera ... post

terraemotus.”

[755] Cited by Horace E. Scudder, in _Noah Webster_. New York and London,

1881, p. 105.

[756] _Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases_, 2 vols.,

Hartford, 1799.

[757] _Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases_, II. 15.

[758] _Id._ II. 34, 84. Dr Robert Williams, in his work on _Morbid

Poisons_ (II. 670) argues for Webster’s electrical theory of influenza

without knowing, or at least without saying, that it was Webster’s. The

much-advertised writings of Mr John Parkin on _The Volcanic Theory of

Epidemics_ (or other title) follow Webster very closely both in the main

idea and in its ramifications, but without acknowledgment to the American

_philosophe_. Milton’s rule was that one might take from an old author if

one improved upon him; but neither Williams nor Parkin has improved upon

Webster.

[759] _Ibid._ II. 30.

[760] “Catalogue of Recorded Earthquakes from 1606 B.C. to A.D. 1850.”

_British Assocn. Reports_, 1852-54.

[761] Abraham Mason, _Phil. Trans._ LII. Part 2, p. 477.

[762] Webster, I. 150.

[763] Hillary, _Changes of the Air, etc._, p. 82.

[764] Hillary, _Changes of the Air, etc._, p. 80.

[765] Webster, I. 250.

[766] Hamilton, _Phil. Trans._ LXXIII. 176.

[767] Mallet’s Catalogue, u. s.

[768] Holm, _Vom Erdbrande auf Island im Jahre 1783_, Kopenhagen, 1784,

says: “Since the outbreak began, the atmosphere of the whole country has

been full of vapour, smoke and dust, so much so that the sun looked

brownish-red, and the fishermen could not find the banks.... Old people,

especially those with weak chests, suffered much from the smell of sulphur

and the volcanic vapours, being afflicted with dyspnoea. Various persons

in good health fell ill, and more would have suffered had not the air been

cooled and refreshed from time to time by rains,” pp. 57, 60. The real

sickness of Iceland in those years had been before the volcanic eruptions,

in 1781 and 1782, when some parts of the island were almost depopulated by

the famine and pestilential fevers that followed the unusual seasons.

[769] _Phil. Trans._ II. (1667), p. 499.

[770] _Ibid._ March-Apr. 1694, p. 81. Sloane had himself felt several

shocks at Port Royal on the 20th October, 1687, between four and six

o’clock in the morning, which were due to the same earthquake that

destroyed Lima in Peru.

[771] _Phil. Trans._ XVIII. p. 83 (March-April, 1794). Series of reports

from Jamaica collected by Sloane.

[772] A few cases have been exceptionally seen at Spanish Town, six miles

from the head of the bay, the infection of which was supposed to have been

brought from the shore by sailors, and it has also prevailed in the

barracks on the high ground of Newcastle not far from the shore.

[773] Without seeking to argue for the connexion between particular

earthquakes and influenzas, but merely to illustrate the possibilities, I

append here an instance that ought not to be overlooked. On the 1st of

November, 1835, there was a great earthquake in the Moluccas, which so

completely changed the soil of the island of Amboina, that it became

notably subject to deadly miasmatic or malarious fevers from that time

forth. For three weeks before the earthquake the atmosphere had been full

of a heavy sulphurous fog, so that miasmata were rising from the soil by

some unwonted pressure before the actual cataclysm. There is no doubt at

all that Amboina became “malarious” in a most marked degree from the date

of the earthquake; it is a classical instance of the sudden effect of

great changes in the earth’s crust upon the frequency and malignity of

remittent and intermittent fevers, according to the testimony of

physicians in the Dutch East Indian service. The influenza nearest to the

earthquake was about a year after, at Sydney, Cape Town, and in the East

Indies, during October and November, 1836. The epidemic appeared about the

same time in the north-east of Europe, spread all over the continent, and

reached London in January, 1837. There was again influenza in Australia

and New Zealand in November, 1838, two years after the last outbreak in

that region.

[774] _Phil. Trans._ for the year 1694, p. 5.

[775] Mallet, “First Report on the Facts of Earthquake Phenomena.” _Trans.

Brit. Assoc. for 1850_, Lond. 1851. Cited from von Hoff.

[776] Archibald Smith, M.D., “Notices of the Epidemics of 1719-20 and 1759

in Peru,” etc. _Trans. Epid. Soc._ II. pt. 1, p. 134. From the _Medical

Gazette of Lima_, 15 March, 1862.

[777] Bell’s Travels, in Pinkerton, VII. 377.

[778] See an article “Railways--their Future in China,” by W. B. Dunlop,

in _Blackwood’s Magazine_, March, 1889, pp. 395-6. A letter in the _Pall

Mall Gazette_, dated 23 May, 1891, and signed “Shanghai,” recalled the

outbreak of Hongkong fever, “the symptoms of which bore a curious

resemblance to the influenza epidemic,” at the time when much building was

going on upon the slope of Victoria Peak: “It was said at the time--I do

not know with what truth--that in this turning-up of the soil, several old

Chinese burying-places were included.”

[779] _Essay on the Most Effective Means of preserving the Health of

Seamen in the Royal Navy._ London, 1757, p. 83.

[780] See _The Eruption of Krakatoa and subsequent phenomena_. Report of

the Krakatoa Committee of the Royal Society.... Edited by G. J. Symons,

London, 1888.

[781] _Edin. Med. Essays and Obs._ II. 32.

[782] _Trans. Col. Phys._ III. 62.

[783] _Gent. Magaz._ 1782, p. 306.

[784] R. Robertson, M.D., _Observations on Jail, Hospital or Ship Fever

from the 4th April, 1776, to the 30th April, 1789_. Lond. 1789, New ed.,

p. 411.

[785] Trotter, _Medicina Nautica_, I. 1797, p. 367.

[786] Notes of a lecture on Influenza, by Gregory, taken by Christison

about the year 1817, in the _Life of Sir Robert Christison_, I. 82.

[787] College of Physicians’ Report, _Trans. Col. Phys._ III. 63.

[788] This is inferred from the varying number of ships in the two fleets

in the several notices of their movements in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_,

for May and June, 1782.

[789] Brian Tuke to Peter Vannes, 14 July, 1528: “For when a whole man

comes from London and talks of the sweat, the same night all the town is

full of it, and thus it spreads as the fame runs.” _Cal. State Papers,

Henry VIII._ IV. 1971.

[790] Webster, II. 63.

[791] College of Physicians’ Report. _Trans. Col. Phys._ III. (1785), p.

60-61. “Information has been received” of the incident.

[792] _Statist. Report of Health of Navy, 1837-43._ Parl. papers, 1 June,

1853, p. 8.

[793] _Ibid._ p. 14.

[794] _Ibid._ s. d.

[795] _Report on Health of Navy, 1857_, p. 69.

[796] _Ibid._ p. 41.

[797] _Ibid._ p. 131.

[798] _Ibid._ p. 112.

[799] _Report for 1856_, p. 100.

[800] Chaumezière, _Fievre catarrhals épidemique, observée à bord du

vaisseau ‘Le Duguay-Trouin’ aux mois de Fevr. et Mars, 1863_. Paris, 1865.

Cited by Hirsch.

[801] Dr Guthrie, of Lyttelton.

[802] Macdonald, _Brit. Med. Journ._, 14 July, 1886.

[803] _Cruise of H.M.S. ‘Galatea’ in 1867-8._

[804] R. A. Chudleigh, in _Brit. Med. Journal_, 4 Sept. 1886. The

experiences are not altogether recent, for they were noted for “the

Chatham Islands and parts of New Zealand” by Dieffenbach, in his German

translation of Darwin’s _Naturalist’s Voyage round the World_. See English

ed. 1876, p. 435 _note_.

[805] _Pall Mall Gazette_, 11 Dec. 1889.

[806] Hirsch, _Geograph. and Histor. Pathol._ I. 29. Engl. Transl.

[807] See the chapter on Sweating Sickness in the first volume of this

History, p. 269, and the author’s other writings there cited.

[808] See the first volume, pp. 456-461. I shall add here a reference to

smallpox among young people in Henry VIII.’s palace at Greenwich in 1528.

Fox, newly arrived from a mission to France, writes to Gardiner, 11 May,

1528 (Harl. MS. 419, fol. 103): The king “commanded me to goe unto

Maystress Annes chamber, who at that tyme, for that my Lady prynces and

dyvers other the quenes maydenes were sicke of the small pocks, lay in the

gallerey in the tilt yarde.”

[809] _Selections from the Records of the Kirk Session, Presbytery and

Synod of Aberdeen._ Edited by John Stuart, for the Spalding Club, Aberd.

1846, I. 427.

[810] Mead to Stutteville, in _Court and Times of Charles I._, I. 359.

Joan, Lady Coke to Sir J. Coke, 26 June, 1628. _Cal. Coke MSS._

[811] Lord Dorchester to the Earl of Carlisle, 30 Aug. 1628, in _C. and T.

Charles I._: “Your dear lady hath suffered by the popular disease, but

without danger, as I understand from her doctor, either of death or

deformity.”

[812] Gilbert Thacker to Sir J. Coke at Portsmouth, 9 June, 1628; Thomas

Alured to the same, 21 June; Richard Poole to the same, 23 June. _Cal.

Coke MSS._, I. Thomas Alured’s house “hath been visited in the same kind,

once with the measles and twice with the smallpox, though I thank God we

are now free; and I know not how many households have run the same

hazard.”

[813] Harl. MS., No. 2177.

[814] The original heading in the Bills of Mortality was “flox and

smallpox.” “Flox” meant flux, or confluent smallpox, which was so

distinguished, as if in kind, from the ordinary discrete form, seldom

fatal. Huxham, in 1725, _Phil. Trans._ XXXIII. 379, still used these

terms: “When the pustules broke out in less than twenty-four hours from

the seizure, they were always of the flux kind, as is commonly

observed.... Pocks which at first were distinct would flux together during

suppuration.” Dover, _Physician’s Legacy_, 1732, p. 101, has “the flux

smallpox, or variolae confluentes,” as one of the varieties: and again,

pustules “fluxing in some parts, in others distinct.”

[815] Having been omitted by Graunt in his table. _Op. cit._ 1662.

[816] _Cal. State Papers_, under the dates. The epidemic seems to have

revived in 1642. An affidavit among the papers of the House of Lords,

excusing the attendance of a witness, states that Thomas Tallcott has

recently lost his wife and one child by smallpox, and that he himself, six

of his children and three of his servants are now visited with the same

disease. 13 July, 1642, _Hist. MSS. Com._ V. 38. The Mercurius Rusticus,

1643, says that Bath was much infected both with the plague and the

smallpox. Cited in Hutchins, _Dorsetshire_, III. 10.

[817] _Remaining Works._ Transl. by Pordage. Lond. 1681. “Of Feavers,” p.

142. In one of his cases Willis was at first uncertain as to the

diagnosis, because “the smallpox had never been in that place.”

[818] _Histor. MSS. Commis._ V. 156-154. Sutherland Letters.

[819] Sutherland Letters, u. s. Andrew Newport to Sir R. Leveson at

Trentham.

[820] Mary Barker to Abel Barker, 26 May and 2 June, 1661. _Hist. MSS.

Com._ V. 398: “There is many dy out in this town, and many abroad that we

heare of”; the squire’s mother is living “within a yard of the smallpox,

which is also in the house of my nearest neighbour”; her own children had

whooping cough, but do not appear to have taken smallpox.

[821] _Hactenus Inaudita, or Animadversions upon the new found way of

curing the Smallpox._ London, 1663. Dated 10 July, 1662. The burden of his

own complaint is of a prominent personage in the smallpox who was killed,

as he maintains, by enormous doses of diacodium, an opiate with oil of

vitriol, much in request among the partisans of the cooling regimen.

[822] His first book was Περὶ ὑδροποσίας, or _A Discourse of Waters, their

Qualities and Effects, Diaeteticall, Pathologicall and Pharmacuiticall_.

By Tobias Whitaker, Doctor in Physicke of Norwich. Lond. 1834. In 1638,

being then Doctor in Physick of London, he published _The Tree of Humane

Life, or the Bloud of the Grape. Proving the Possibilitie of maintaining

humane life from infancy to extreame old age without any sicknesse by the

use of wine._ An enlarged edition in Latin was published at Frankfurt in

1655, and reprinted at the Hague in 1660, and again in 1663. The passages

cited in the text occur in his _Opinions on the Smallpox_. London, 1661.

[823] His only reference to the deaths in the royal family, which were

currently set down to professional mismanagement, comes in where he

opposes the prescription of Riverius to bathe the hands and feet in cold

water: “this hath proved fatall,” he says, “in such as have rare and

tender skins, as is proved by the bathing of the illustrious Princess

Royal. Therefore I shall rather ordain aperient fomentations in their bed,

to assist their eruption and move sweat.”

[824] _Pyretologia_, II. 94, 112.

[825] Walter Harris, M.D., _De morbis acutis infantum_, 1689. There were

several editions, some in English.

[826] Jurin, _Letter to Cotesworth_. Lond. 1723, p. 11.

[827] Speaking of malignant sore-throat, he says: “The younger the

patients are, the greater is their danger, which is contrary to what

happens in the measles and smallpox.” _Commentaries on Diseases_, p. 25.

[828] Andrew’s _Practice of Inoculation impartially considered_. Exeter,

1765, p. 60.

[829] Duvillard (_Analyse et Tableaux de l’Influence de la Petite Vérole

sur la Mortalité à chaque Age._ Paris, 1806) gives the ages at which 6792

persons died of smallpox at Geneva from 1580 to 1760, according to the

registers of burials:

Total at

all ages. 0-1, -2, -3, -4, -5, -6, -7, -8, -9, -10, -15, -20, -25, -30.

6792 1376 1300 1290 898 603 381 301 189 109 78 126 54 39 31

The public health of Geneva altered very much for the better in the course

of two centuries from 1561 to 1760. From 1561 to 1600, in every hundred

children born, 30·9 died before nine months, on an annual average, and 50

before five years. From 1601 to 1700 the ratios were 27·7 under nine

months, and 46 before five years. From 1701 to 1760 the deaths under nine

months had fallen to 17·2 per cent., and under five years to 33·6 per

cent. (Calculated from a table in the _Bibliothèque Britannique_, Sciences

et Arts, IV. 327.) Thus, with an increasing probability of life, the

age-incidence of fatal smallpox may have varied a good deal within the

period from 1580 to 1760. It is given by Duvillard separately for the

years 1700-1783 (inclusive of measles): during which limited period a

smaller ratio died under nine months, and a larger ratio above the age of

five years, than in the aggregate of the whole period from 1580 to 1760.

Whatever may have been the rule at Geneva, it cannot be applied to English

towns; for, while some 30 per cent. of the smallpox deaths were at ages

above five in the Swiss city (1700-1783), only 12 per cent. were above

five in English towns such as Chester and Warrington in 1773-4.

[830] _Pyretologia_, 2 vols. Lond. 1692-94, vol. II.

[831] _Natural History of Oxfordshire._ Oxford, 1677, p. 23.

[832] In his _Diary_, under the year 1646, homeward journey from Rome.

[833] The physician was “a very learned old man,” Dr Le Chat, who had

counted among his patients at Geneva such eminent personages as Gustavus

Adolphus and the duke of Buckingham.

[834] Dr Dover has left us an account of Sydenham’s practice in the

smallpox as he himself experienced it: “Whilst I lived with Dr Sydenham, I

had myself the smallpox, and fell ill on the twelfth day. In the beginning

I lost twenty ounces of blood. He gave me a vomit, but I find by

experience purging much better. I went abroad, by his direction, till I

was blind, and then took to my bed. I had no fire allowed in my room, my

windows were constantly open, my bedclothes were ordered to be laid no

higher than my waist. He made me take twelve bottles of small beer,

acidulated with spirit of vitriol, every twenty-four hours. I had of this

anomalous kind to a very great degree, yet never lost my senses one

moment.” _The Ancient Physician’s Legacy._ London, 1732, p. 114.

[835] _Scotia Illustrata._ Lib. II., cap. 10.

[836] _De Febribus &c._, Lond. 1657: cap. ix. “De Variolis et Morbillis,”

p. 141.

[837] “First of all,” he says, “let the patient be kept with all care and

diligence from cold air, especially in winter, so that the pores of the

skin may be opened and the pocks assisted to come out. Therefore let him

be kept in a room well closed, into which cold air is in no manner to

enter, and let him be sedulously covered up in bed.... I desire the more

to admonish my friends in this matter, for that Robert Cage, esquire, my

dear sister’s husband,” etc.

[838] Besides cases to show the ill effects of blooding, vomits, purges

and cooling medicines such as spirit of vitriol, he gives examples as if

to refute Sydenham’s favourite notion that salivation, diarrhoea and

menstrual haemorrhage were relieving or salutary. Morton’s chief object

was to bring out the eruption, and to get it to maturate kindly; an

eruption which languished, or did not rise and fill, was for him the most

untoward of events. Sydenham, on the other hand, argued that the danger

was in proportion to the number of pustules and to the total quantity of

matter contained in them; and he sought, accordingly, to restrain cases

which threatened to be confluent by an evacuant treatment or repressive

regimen.

[839] Walter Lynn, M.B., _A more easy and safe Method of Cure in the

Smallpox founded upon Experiments, and a Review of Dr Sydenham’s Works_,

Lond. 1714; _Some Reflections upon the Modern Practice of Physic in

Relation to the Smallpox_, Lond. 1715. F. Bellinger, _A Treatise

concerning the Smallpox_, Lond. 1721.

[840] Letter from Woodward to the _Weekly Journal_, 20 June, 1719, in

Nichols, _Lit. Anecd._ VI. 641.

[841] Rev. Dr Mangey to Dr Waller, 4 March, 1720, London. Nichols’ _Lit.

Anecd._ I. 135.

[842] Huxham, _Phil. Trans._ XXXII. (1725), 379.

[843] _Gent. Magaz._, Sept. 1752.

[844] John Barker, M.D., _Agreement betwixt Ancient and Modern

Physicians_, Lond. 1747. Also two French editions. It is on Van Helmont

that Barker pours his scorn for “breaking down the two pillars of ancient

medicine--bleeding and purging in acute diseases.” That upsetting person

forbore to bleed even in pleurisy; the only thing that he took from the

ancient medicine was a thin diet in fevers; “and yet this scheme, as wild

and absurd as it seems, had its admirers for a time.”

[845] Lynn (u. s. 1714-15) agrees as to the matter of fact, namely, that

the mortality from smallpox was greater among the richer classes, who were

too much pampered and heated in their cure, than among the poorer, who had

not the means to fee physicians and pay apothecaries’ bills.

[846] He was under the tutelage of John Churchill, duke of Marlborough,

who does not give a name to the malady (Coxe’s _Life of Marlborough_). Dr

James Johnstone, junr., of Worcester, in his _Treatise on the Malignant

Angina_, 1779, p. 78, claims the death of the Duke of Gloucester as from

that cause, on the evidence of Bishop Kennet’s account.

[847] In the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, under the dates.

[848] _A Direct Method of ordering and curing People of that Loathsome

Disease the Smallpox, being the twenty years’ practical experience of John

Lamport alias Lampard_, London, 1685. The writer was probably an empiric,

“Practitioner in Chyrurgery and Physick,” dwelling at Havant, and

attending the George at Chichester on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, the

Half Moon at Petersfield on Saturdays. He says: “One great cause of this

disease being so mortal in the country is because the infection doth make

many physicians backward to visit such patients, either for fear of taking

the disease themselves or transferring the infection to others.” He has

another fling at the regular faculty: “Do not run madding to Dr Dunce or

his assistance to be let bloud.” Empirics, although they were commonly

right about blood-letting, were under the suspicion of not speaking the

truth about their cures.

[849] Macaulay, _History of England_, IV. 532. The moving passage on the

former horrors of smallpox, _à propos_ of the death of Queen Mary in 1694,

is familiar to most, but it may be cited once more in the context of a

professional history: “That disease, over which science has since achieved

a succession of glorious and beneficent victories, was then the most

terrible of all the ministers of death. The havoc of the plague had been

far more rapid: but plague had visited our shores only once or twice

within living memory; and the smallpox was always present, filling the

churchyards with corpses, tormenting with constant fears all whom it had

not yet stricken, leaving on those whose lives it spared the hideous

traces of its power, turning the babe into a changeling at which the

mother shuddered, and making the eyes and cheeks of the betrothed maiden

objects of horror to the lover.” It is not given to us all to write like

this; but it is possible that the loss of picturesqueness may be balanced

by a gain of accuracy and correctness.

[850] Kellwaye, u. s., 1593.

[851] Dr Richard Holland in 1730 (_A Short View of the Smallpox_, p. 75),

says: “A lady of distinction told me that she and her three sisters had

their faces saved in a bad smallpox by wearing light silk masks during the

distemper.”

[852] As I do not intend to come back to the subject of pockmarked faces,

I shall add here that I have found nothing in medical writings of the 18th

century, nor in its fiction or memoirs, to show that pockpitting was more

than an occasional blemish of the countenance. At that time most had

smallpox in infancy or childhood, when the chances of permanent marking

would be less. The disappearance of pockpitted faces was discovered long

ago. The report of the National Vaccine Board for 1822 says: “We

confidently appeal to all who frequent theatres and crowded assemblies to

admit that they do not discover in the rising generation any longer that

disfigurement of the human face which was obvious everywhere some years

since.” The members of this board were probably seniors who remembered the

18th century; and it is quite true that the first quarter of the 19th

century was singularly free from smallpox in England except in the

epidemic of 1817-19. But the above passage became stereotyped in the

reports: exactly the same phrase, appealing to what they all remembered

“some years since,” was used in the report for 1825, a year which had more

smallpox in London than any since the 18th century, and again in the

report for 1837, the first year of an epidemic which caused forty thousand

deaths in England and Wales. These stereotyped reminiscences are apt to be

as lasting a blemish as the pockholes themselves.

[853] Collinson, _Hist. of Somerset_, III. 226, citing Aubrey’s

_Miscellanies_, 33.

[854] Blomefield, _Hist. of Norfolk_, III. 417.

[855] Thoresby, _Ducatus Leodiensis_, ed. Whitaker. App. p. 151.

[856] _Cal. Le Fleming MSS._ p. 408 (_Hist. MSS. Com._). There are also

many references to smallpox from 1676 onwards in the letters of the Duke

of Rutland at Belvoir, lately calendared for the Historical MSS.

Commission.

[857] In the _London Gazette_ of 11-14 May, 1674, the Vice-Chancellor and

two doctors of medicine of the University of Cambridge contradicted by

advertisement a report that smallpox and other infections were prevalent

in the university.

[858] Marquis of Worcester to the Marchioness, [London] 8 June, 1675

(Beaufort MSS. _Hist. MSS. Commis._ XII. App. 9, p. 85): “They will have

it heere that the smallpox and purple feaver is at the Bath, and the

Dutchesse of Portsmouth puts off her journey upon it. The king askt me

about it as soon as I came to towne. Pray enquire, and lett me know the

truth.” The _London Gazette_ of 17-21 June and 28 June-1 July, 1775, had

advertisements “that it hath been certified under the hands of several

persons of quality” that Bath and the country adjacent was wholly free of

the plague or any other contagious distempers whatsoever.

[859] Burnet, _History of his own Time_, IV. 240.

[860] Walter Harris, M.D., _De morbis acutis infantum_. Ed. of 1720, p.

161.

[861] John Cury, M.D., _An Essay on Ordinary Fever_. Lond. 1743, p. 40.

[862] See p. 438.

[863] Macaulay hardly realized the anomalous character of the queen’s

attack of smallpox. “The physicians,” he says, “contradicted each other

and themselves in a way which sufficiently indicates the state of medical

science in that day. The disease was measles; it was scarlet fever; it was

spotted fever; it was erysipelas.... Radcliffe’s opinion proved to be

right.” There had been some doubt on the first appearance of the eruption

whether it would turn to measles or smallpox. Sydenham says that it was

often difficult to make the diagnosis at that stage, and in the queen’s

case the first signs were anomalous as well. Next day, however, the

eruption all over the body became “smallpox in its proper and distinct

form.” But it did not long remain so; the livid spots, into which the

pustules subsided, again raised doubts in the minds of some of the

physicians whether it was not measles after all; and there was undoubtedly

erysipelas of the face. Harris took the middle course of diagnosing

“smallpox and measles mingled,” a name by which the form that we now call

haemorrhagic smallpox had been known from the early part of the

seventeenth century. It was at this late and ominous stage of the illness

that Radcliffe was called in; it is not correct to say, as the historian

says, that he was the first to pronounce “the more alarming name of

smallpox.” The diagnosis was then a matter of little moment, for the queen

was dying. He declared that “her majesty was a dead woman, for it was

impossible to do any good in her case when remedies had been given that

were so contrary to the nature of her distemper; yet he would endeavour to

do all that lay in his power to give her ease.” (Munk’s _Roll of the

College of Physicians_, II. 458.) For some unexplained reason Radcliffe

was made to bear the blame of the queen’s death, an accusation which he

deserved as little as he deserved the credit given him by the historian of

having been the only physician to make the correct diagnosis.

Macaulay is equally unfortunate in his remark that smallpox “was then the

most terrible of all the ministers of death,” in his comparison of it to

plague, and in his rhetoric generally. The haemorrhagic form, of which the

queen died, was rare. Dover adds it as a fourth variety, but admits that

he had seen only five cases of it. Ferguson, of Aberdeen, as late as 1808,

in a paper on measles (_Med. and Phys. Journal_, XXI. 359), described a

haemorrhagic case of smallpox which he once saw, without knowing that it

was a recognized variety of smallpox at all. However terrible a minister

of death smallpox may sometimes have been, it happened that there was

comparatively little of it in London during the period covered by

Macaulay’s history; and it certainly did not “fill the churchyards,” as he

might have found out by referring to that not altogether recondite source,

the bills of mortality. From 1694 to 1700 fevers caused three and a half

times more deaths than smallpox. In the year 1696, when “the distress of

the common people was severe,” the smallpox deaths in London were 196, or

about one-hundredth part of the mortality from all causes.

[864] Blomefield, III. 432. The following are two cases from the London

epidemic of 1710: June, 15.--“Lord Ashburnham’s brother has the smallpox,

and the first, concluding he had had it, went to him, and now himself very

ill of them. Doctor Garth, who says none has them twice, examined the

servants, and they tell him he was but six days ill then; so he concludes

that was not the smallpox.” _Cal. Belvoir MSS._, II. 190.

[865] Lynn, u. s. He recalls a remark made by a writer in 1710 that the

severity of that epidemic “was not due to a peculiar state of the air, but

to a defect in some of our great physicians, who, being too fully

employed, could not give due attendance to all or even to any of their

patients through the multiplicity of them: for want of which, and the

severity of their injunctions, which hindered others from applying

anything in their absence, many persons were lost who might otherwise have

been saved with due care.”

[866] John Woodward, M.D., _The State of Physick and Diseases, with an

inquiry into the causes of the late increase of them, but more

particularly of the Smallpox; with some considerations on the new practice

of purging in that disease_. London, 1718.

[867] See the account of the Dispensary of the College of Physicians in

Warwick Lane, in Munk’s _Roll of the Coll. of Phys._ II. 499, under the

head of Sir Samuel Garth. The dispensary was started in 1687 and

languished until 1724. The General Dispensary in Aldersgate Street was

opened in 1770 with Dr Hulme as physician, and Dr Lettsom as additional

physician in 1773.

[868] Letter of 27 March, year not given. _Hist. MSS. Com._ V. 618. See

also the letter of 4 March, 1720, from Mangey to Waller, cited above, p.

450.

[869] Dr Philip Rose, of Bedfordbury (“over against a baker, next door to

the Old Black Horse, two doors from Chandos Street, St Martin’s parish”),

having been called by Lady Wyche to see her butler, pronounced him to be

in the smallpox; whereupon the lady informed the physician that “she knew

an eminent nurse who had managed above twenty of my Lord Cheyney’s

servants in the smallpox, and every one of them had recovered.” Her butler

was accordingly carried to this nurse’s house in a by street near Swallow

Street. _An Essay on the Smallpox._ By Philip Rose, M.D. Lond. 1724, p.

18.

[870] “An Account or History of the Procuring the Small Pox by Incision,

or Inoculation; as it has for some time been practised at Constantinople.”

Being the Extract of a Letter from Emanuel Timonius, Oxon. et Patav. M.D.,

S.R.S., dated at Constantinople, December, 1713. Communicated to _Phil.

Trans._ XXIX. (Jan.-March, 1714) 72, by Dr Woodward, Gresham Professor of

Physic. Timoni had been in England in 1703, and had been incorporated a

doctor of medicine at Oxford on his Padua degree: hence, perhaps, his

correspondence.

[871] _An Essay on External Remedies_, Lond. 1715, p. 153. Kennedy settled

in practice in London as an ophthalmic surgeon, and appears to have

enjoyed the patronage of Arbuthnot. His other work, _Ophthalmographia, or

Treatise of the Eye and its Diseases, with appendix on Diseases of the

Ear_, Lond. 1723, which is dedicated to Arbuthnot, shows a knowledge of

optics and of the structure of the parts concerned in operations on the

eye.

[872] Sloane, _Phil. Trans._ XLIX. (1756), p. 516, “An Account of

Inoculation given to Mr Ranby to be published, anno 1736.”

[873] Jacobus Pylarinus, _Nova et Tuta Variolas excitandi per

Transplantationem Methodus, nuper inventa et in usum tracta, qua rite

peracta immunia in posterum praeservantur ab hujusmodi contagio corpora_.

Venetiis, 1715. Privilege dated 10 Nov., 1715. Reprinted in _Phil. Trans._

XXIX. (Jan.-March, 1716), p. 393.

[874] _A Dissertation concerning Inoculation of Smallpox._ By W.

D[ouglass], Boston, 1730.

[875] _loc. cit._

[876] Published under the initials J. C., M.D.

[877] _De Peste dissertatio habita Apr. 17, 1721, cui accessit descriptio

inoculationis Variolarum_, a Gualt. Harris, Lond. 1721.

[878] _Phil. Trans._ XLIX. 104.

[879] Sloane, u. s., 1736.

[880] Jurin, _Account of the Success of Inoculating the Smallpox_. Annual

reports from 1723 to 1726.

[881] Alexander Monro, primus, _An Account of the Inoculation of the

Smallpox in Scotland_. Edin. 1765 (Reply to circular of queries issued by

the dean and delegates of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris).

[882] _Phil. Trans._ 1722: papers by Perrot Williams, M.D. (p. 262), and

Richard Wright (p. 267).

[883] _Voyages du Sr. A. de la Motraye._ Tome II. La Haye, 1727, Chap.

III. p. 98. He saw Timoni at Constantinople on his return from the

Caucasus. Timoni used “a three-edged surgeon’s needle,” which is more

intelligible than three needles tied together. La Motraye’s travellers’

tales have not enjoyed the best credit. But this of the inoculation in

Circassia has been made by Voltaire the sole basis of his spirited account

of inoculation as the national practice of that country (_Lettres sur les

Anglais_, Lettre XI. “Sur l’insertion de la petite-vérole,” 1727,

reprinted as the article “Inoculation” in his _Dict. Philosophique_,

1764). There has never been a grosser instance of a myth constructed in

cold blood. The fable does not need refutation because it is mere

assertion, in the manner of a _philosophe_. But the British ambassador at

Constantinople made inquiries concerning the alleged Georgian or

“Circassian” practice in 1755, at the instance of Maty, the foreign

secretary of the Royal Society (_Phil. Trans._ XLIX. 104). A Capuchin

friar, “a grave sober man” who had returned shortly before from a sixteen

years’ residence in Georgia and “gives an account of the virtues and

vices, good and evil, of that country with plainness and candour,”

solemnly declared to Mr Porter that he never heard of inoculation “at

Akalsike, Imiritte or Tiflis,” and was persuaded that it had never been

known in the Caucasus. It was impossible that either the public or private

practice of inoculation could have been concealed from him, as he went in

and out among the people practising physic. He had often attended them in

the smallpox, which, he said, was unusually severe there. On the other

hand La Motraye says: “I found the Circassians becoming more beautiful as

we penetrated into the mountains. As I saw no one marked with the

smallpox, it occurred to me to ask if they had any secret to protect them

from the ravages which this enemy of beauty makes among all nations. They

told me, Yes; and gave me to understand that it was inoculating, or

communicating it to those whom they wished to preserve by taking the

matter from one who had it and mixing the same with the blood at incisions

which they made. On this I resolved to see the operation, if it were

possible, and made inquiry in every village that we passed through if

there was anyone about to have it done. I soon found an opportunity in a

village named Degliad, where I heard that they were going to inoculate a

young girl of four or five years old just as we were passing.” This was

published fifteen years after, Timoni’s account being given in an

Appendix.

[884] _Travels_, IV. 484. See also for Algiers, _Lond. Med. Journ._ XI.

141. In those cases there was no inoculation by puncture or otherwise.

[885] _Miscell. Curiosa s. Ephemer. Med.-Phys. Acad. Nat. Curios._ Decuria

I., An. 2, Obs. CLXV. 1671. D. Thomae Bartholini, “Febris ex

Imaginatione.” Scholion by D. Henr. Vollgnad, Vratislaviae practicus.

[886] _Miscell. Curiosa_, _l. c._ 1677.

[887] See Drage, _Pyretologia_. Lond. 1665.

[888] Nuremberg, 1662, p. 529.

[889] La Condamine cites Bartholin’s essay on Transplantation as if it

really contained the germ of inoculation, which it does not, the single

reference in it to smallpox being in a passage where the contagion of

that, as well as of plague, syphilis and dysentery, is said to be capable

of being turned aside from one to another.

[890] Drage (_Pyretologia_) gives a case where an ague passed from one

person to another in the fumes of blood drawn in phlebotomy. He says also

(_Sicknesses and Diseases from Witchcraft_, 1665, p. 21) that a witch

could be made to take back a disease by scratching her and drawing blood.

[891] _De Transplantatione Morborum._ Hafniae, 1673, p. 24.

[892] _De Febribus_, u. s. In the plague, a live cock applied to the botch

was thought to draw the venom; the cock was then to be buried. Also crusts

of hot ryeloaf hung in the room where one had died of plague absorbed the

venom. Gabelhover, _The Boock of Physicke_, Dort, 1599, p. 298. Bread was

used for the same purpose in fevers as late as 1765. Muret, _Mém. par la

Société Econom. de Berne_, 1766.

[893] _Dissertationes in Inoculationem Variolarum_, a J. à Castro, G.

Harris, et A. le Duc. Lugd. Bat. 1722.

[894] Gardiner’s _Triall of Tabacco_. London, 1610, fol. 38.

[895] _Ibid._ fol. 43. _The City Remembrancer_, 1769, a work claiming to

be Gideon Harvey’s, says that in the Great Plague of London, 1665, some

low persons contracted the French pox of purpose to keep off the infection

of plague.

[896] _Inquiry how to prevent the Smallpox_, Chester, 1785:--“No care was

taken to prevent the spreading; but on the contrary there seemed to be a

general wish that all the children might have it.” Cited from Mr Edwards,

surgeon, of Upton, near Chester. Again (_Sketch of a Plan, &c._, 1793, p.

491), “They neither feared it nor shunned it. Much more frequently, by

voluntary and intentional intercourse, they endeavoured to catch the

infection.”

[897] _History of Physic_, Lond. 1725-26, II. 288. This was written at a

time when the novelty of inoculation had passed off, and may be taken as

Freind’s mature opinion. Douglass, of Boston, writing in 1730, implies

that Freind’s objections had been overcome; which may mean no more than he

says in general: “Yet from repeated tryals the Anti-Inoculators do now

acknowledge that inoculation, generally speaking, is a more easy way of

undergoing the smallpox.” Condamine, in his French essay of 1755, counts

Freind among the original supporters of inoculation, and ridicules the

opposition to it. Munk, in citing the title of Wagstaffe’s _Letter to Dr

Freind showing the danger and uncertainty of Inoculating the Smallpox_

(London, 1722), omits the words “to Dr Freind,” at the same time

describing the pamphlet as “specious.” There seems no reason to doubt that

Freind shared Wagstaffe’s views.

[898] Hecquet, of Paris, who is supposed to have been the original of Dr

Sangrado in ‘Gil Bias,’ gave the following reasons against inoculation

(_Raisons de doutes contre l’Inoculation_): “Its antiquity is not

sufficiently ascertained: the operation rests upon false facts: it is

unjust, void of art, destitute of rules: ... it doth not prevent the

natural smallpox: ... it bears no likeness to physic, and savours strongly

of magic.”

[899] James Jurin, M.D., _Account of the Success of Inoculation_, 1724, p.

3.

[900] G. Baker, M.D., _Oratio Harveiana_, 1761, p. 24.

[901] _Sloane, Phil. Trans._ XLIX. 516.

[902] They are given in Maitland’s _Vindication_, 1722, and in one of

Jurin’s papers.

[903] In regard to the last of them, when Frewen in 1759 was controverting

the fancy of Boerhaave and Cheyne that smallpox might be hindered from

coming on in a person exposed to contagion by a timely use of the Aethiops

mineral, he said there was a fallacy in the evidence, because many persons

ordinarily escape smallpox “who had been supposed to be in the greatest

danger of taking it.” Huxham also pointed out that a person might be

susceptible at one time but not at another, or insusceptible altogether;

and the elder Heberden wrote: “Many instances have occurred to me which

show that one who had never had the smallpox may safely associate, and

even be in the same bed with a variolous patient for the first two or

three days of the eruption without any danger of receiving the infection.”

William Heberden, sen., M.D., _Commentaries on Disease_, 1802, p. 437.

[904] Dr James Jurin was educated at Cambridge, and elected a fellow of

Trinity College. He became a schoolmaster at Newcastle, where he also gave

scientific lectures. Coming to London, with a Leyden medical degree, he

devoted himself to the Newtonian mathematics and was made one of the

secretaries of the Royal Society, Newton being the president. He was one

of the original physicians of the new hospital founded in the Borough by

Guy, the rich bookseller. He made a fortune by medical practice, and was

elected president of the College of Physicians a few weeks before he died.

In medicine his name is associated with the inoculation statistics, the

idea of which, as well as most of the substance, he got from Nettleton,

and with “Jurin’s Lixivium Lithontripticum,” or solvent for the stone, the

idea of which belonged originally to Mrs Johanna Stevens, and was sold by

her to the State for five thousand pounds on the 16th of June, 1739, the

prescriptions having been made public in the _London Gazette_ of 19th

June. On the 15th of December, 1744, Jurin was called to see the Earl of

Orford (Sir Robert Walpole), who was suffering from stone, either renal or

vesical. He began administering his alkaline solvent, “four times stronger

than the strongest capital soap-lye,” and during the six weeks of his

attendance had given his patient thirty-six ounces of it. Horace Walpole

made him angry by arguing on the medicine: “It is of so great violence

that it is to split a stone when it arrives at it, and yet it is to do no

damage to all the tender intestines through which it must first pass. I

told him I thought it was like an admiral going on a secret expedition of

war with instructions which are not to be opened till he arrives in such a

latitude.” (_Letters of Horace Walpole_, Cunningham, I. 339.) His services

were at length dispensed with, and the earl, whose case was probably

hopeless before, died in a few weeks. A war of pamphlets followed, Ranby,

the serjeant-surgeon, maintaining that the patient had “died of the

lixivium.” Mead, also, expressed himself strongly upon the attempt to use

a modification of Mrs Stevens’s solvent.

[905] The fatalities are given somewhat fully in Jurin’s annual accounts

of the _Success of Inoculation_, 1723-27.

[906] John Wreden, body-surgeon to the Prince of Wales, author of _An

Essay on the Inoculation of the Smallpox_ (Lond. 1779), may also be

counted among those who gave a more real smallpox. See especially his

cases at Hanover.

[907] H. Newman, “Way of Proceeding in the Smallpox Inoculation in New

England.” _Phil. Trans._ XXXII. (1722), p. 33.

[908] Thomas Nettleton, Letter to Whitaker. _Ibid._ p. 39.

[909] _Phil. Trans._ _l. c._ p. 46. A remark follows which is not quite

clear: “There is one observation which I have made, tho’ I would not yet

lay any great stress upon it, that in families where any have been

inoculated, those who have been afterwards seized never had an ill sort of

smallpox, but always recovered very well.”

[910] _Phil. Trans._ 1722, p. 209. Dated from Halifax, 16 Dec. 1722.

[911] Dr William Douglass to Dr Cadwallader Colden, 28 July, 1721, and 1

May, 1722, in _Massachu. Hist. Soc. Collections_, Series 4, vol. II. pp.

166-9. Also _A Dissertation concerning Inoculation of Smallpox_. By W.

D[ouglass]. Boston, 1730; and _A Practical Essay concerning the Smallpox_.

By William Douglass, M.D. Boston, 1730.

[912] Boylston, _Account of the Smallpox inoculated in New England_.

London, 1726.

[913] This was admitted, in a manner, for the great Boston epidemic of

1752, by the Rev. T. Prince, _Gent. Magaz._ Sept. 1753, p. 414. The

epidemic attacked 5545 (in a population of 15,684), and cut off 569. The

numbers inoculated were 2124 (including 139 negroes), of which number 30

died and were included in the total of 569. Many of the inoculated, says

Prince, were not careful to avoid catching the infection in the natural

way; “for I have known some, as soon as inoculated, receive visits from

their friends, who had been with the sick of the same disease and ’tis

likely carried infection with them; it seems highly probable that the

inoculated received the infection from them into their vitals.” It may be

supposed that the inoculated who were more careful formed a part of the

1843 who “moved out of town.” More than a third of the population took

natural smallpox in some four months (April to July) of 1752, more than a

third had had it before, a severe epidemic having occurred in 1730 as well

as in 1721.

[914] Clinch, _Rise and Progress of the Smallpox, with an Appendix to

prove that Inoculation is no Security from the Natural Smallpox_. 2nd ed.

1725.

[915] C. Deering, M.D., _An Account of an Improved Method of treating the

Smallpox_. Nottingham, 1736, p. 27. Woodville appears to accept this case

as authentic.

[916] Pierce Dod, M.D., F.R.S., _Several Cases in Physic_. London, 1746.

[917] Kirkpatrick, and after him Woodville, treat the alleged experience

of Jones as pure fiction.

[918] La Condamine, of Paris, an amateur enthusiast for inoculation, did

all he could to upset the case. He got his friend Dr Maty, foreign

secretary of the Royal Society, to make inquiry through the British

ambassador to the Porte. It happened that Angelo Timoni, son of the

inoculator, was at that time an interpreter at the British Embassy; he

applied to his mother, who re-affirmed the facts as to the inoculation of

her child in infancy, and her death by the natural smallpox twenty-four

years after. The only defence left was that the inoculation had not been

done by Dr Timoni’s own hand. La Condamine, _Mémoires pour servir à

l’Histoire de l’Inoculation_. 2me Mémoire. Paris, 1768.

[919] Rush to Lettsom, Philadelphia, 17 June, 1808, in Pettigrew’s

_Memoirs of Lettsom_, III. 201.

[920] Fuller, in his _Exanthematalogia_, makes a somewhat late defence of

it in 1729. But Richard Holland, who published in 1730 _A Short View of

the Smallpox_, does not mention inoculation, and in the following passage

he writes of smallpox as if the extravagant hopes of the preceding years

had vanished: “This last season having afforded too many melancholy

instances of the fatal effects of the distemper, though under the care and

direction of the most eminent physicians, since the disease,

notwithstanding the plainness of its symptoms, is become the _opprobrium

medicinae_,” _&c._ (p. 3).

[921] _Phil. Trans._ Jan.-March, 1722: “The way of proceeding in the Small

Pox inoculated in New England.” Communicated by Henry Newman, Esq. of the

Middle Temple, p. 33, § 3: “Yet we find the variolous matter fetched from

those that have the inoculated smallpox altogether as agreeable and

effectual as any other.”

[922] _An Essay on Inoculation: occasioned by the Smallpox being brought

into S. Carolina in the year 1738._ By J. Kilpatrick. London, 1743, p. 50.

The essay had been “first printed in South Carolina,” the London edition

of 1743 having an Appendix dealing historically with the Charleston

epidemic of 1738.

[923] Thomas Frewen, M.D., _The Practice and Theory of Inoculation_.

London, 1749.

[924] J. Kirkpatrick, M.D., _Analysis of Inoculation, with a consideration

of the most remarkable appearances in the Small Pocks_. Lond. 1754.

[925] Kirkpatrick, _Analysis_.

[926] La Condamine, _Mémoires pour servir, &c._ (Deuxième Discours), 1768,

p. 91. It matters little what Lobb may or may not have done. But it does

not appear that Boerhaave ever tried to get rid of the eruption of

smallpox by means of drugs. In the chapter of his _Aphorisms_, “De

Variolis” (§ 1392) he says that he imagines a specific might be found, in

the class of antidotes, to correct and destroy the variolous virus,

indicating antimony and mercury as likely agents for the purpose owing to

certain physical properties of the medicinal preparations of them. Ruston

(_An Essay on Inoculation_, 3rd ed. 1768) says that Boerhaave, who died in

1738, “never practised it himself; nor seems to have understood the manner

in which these medicines operate to produce their salutary effects.”

However they were known as the Boerhaavian antidotes to smallpox, and were

used in Rhode Island, it is said with great success and as a secret.

Ruston used them in England, and discovered by an analysis that Sutton’s

secret powders were the same. They seem also to have been used by Cheyne

to prevent the development of smallpox in persons who had been exposed to

contagion and had presumably taken the contagion. Frewen, in 1759,

published a pamphlet to show the improbability of antimony and mercury

having any such action, and the fallacy of the claims made for their

success.

[927] The Duchess gave the following account of her own case (_Gent.

Magaz._ Nov. 1765, p. 495, sent by Gatti to a friend in London): “On the

12th of March, 1763, I was inoculated for the smallpox, and about four or

five days afterwards a redness appeared round the orifice, which Mons.

Gatti called an inflammation, and assured me was a sign that the smallpox

had taken effect: these were the very terms he used. The redness or

inflammation increased every day, and about the seventh or eighth day, the

wound began to suppurate. There appeared also about the wound six small

risings, or pimples, which successively suppurated and disappeared the

next day. Mons. Gatti, upon their appearance, again assured me that the

smallpox had taken effect. In the afternoon of the eleventh or twelfth day

of my inoculation I felt a general uneasiness and emotion, a pain in my

head and my back, and about my heart, in consequence of which I went to

bed sooner than ordinary. I slept well, however, and rose without any

disorder in the morning. These symptoms Mons. Gatti assured me were the

forerunners of the eruption. The next day a pretty large rising or pimple

appeared in my forehead, turned white, and then died away, leaving a mark

which continued many days.

“The wound in my arm continued to suppurate seven or eight days, and Mons.

Gatti now assured me that I had nothing to fear from the smallpox; and

upon this assurance I relied without the least doubt, and continued in

perfect confidence of my security till the natural smallpox appeared. I

continued very well during the whole time of my inoculation, except one

day, as mentioned above, and I went out every day.

“Monmorency, D. de Boufflers.”

[928] Gibbon’s _Autobiography_. It was to Dr Maty that Gibbon, in 1759,

submitted his French essay on the Study of Literature, having had a fair

copy of it transcribed by one of the French prisoners at Petersfield. Of

Maty he says: “His reputation was justly founded on the eighteen volumes

of the _Journal Britannique_, which he had supported almost alone, with

perseverance and success. This humble though useful labour, which had once

been dignified by the genius of Bayle and the learning of Le Clerc, was

not disgraced by the taste, the knowledge and the judgment of Maty.”

[929] Angelo Gatti, M.D., _New Observations on Inoculation_. Translated

from the French by M. Maty. Lond. 1768. The French edition was published

at Brussels in 1767.

[930] John Andrew, M.D., _The Practice of Inoculation impartially

considered_. Dated 17 June, 1765, Exeter, p. 61.

[931] _La Pratique de l’Inoculation._ Paris, An. VII. (1798), p 51.

[932] Andrew, u. s. p. 53.

[933] “I am sorry to have found that this operation has not always secured

the patient from having the smallpox afterwards, if the eruptions have

been imperfect without maturation. I attended one in a very full smallpox,

which ran through all its stages in the usual manner; yet this patient had

been inoculated ten years before, and, on the 5th day after inoculation,

began to be feverish, with a headache, followed by a slight eruption,

which eruption soon went off without coming to suppuration; the place of

inoculation had inflamed and remained open ten days, leaving a deep scar,

which I saw.” William Heberden, Senr., M.D., _Commentaries on Disease_ (p.

436). This was published in 1802, after the author’s death; but as he was

in the height of his practice from 1760 onwards, the case, which is

undated, may be taken as illustrating Heberden’s position in the Suttonian

controversy.

[934] Benj. Chandler, M.D., _An Essay on the Present Method of

Inoculation_. Lond. 1767.

[935] _Method of Inoculating the Smallpox._ Lond. 1766. Baker thought he

was “an enemy of improvement and no philosopher,” who stood upon the

antecedent improbability of securing the patient by a minimal inoculation

such as Sutton used.

[936] Giles Watts, M.D., _Vindication of the Method of Inoculating_.

London, 1767.

[937] William Bromfeild, _Thoughts on the Method of treating Persons

Inoculated for the Smallpox_. Lond. 1767. He was a Court surgeon and a man

of some eminence. Morgagni dedicated one of the books of his _De Sedibus

et Causis Morborum_ to him as representing the Royal Society.

[938] W. Langton, M.D., _Address to the Public on the present Method of

Inoculation_. London and Salisbury, 1767. Dr Thomas Glass, of Exeter,

replied in 1767 to Bromfeild and Langton, in _A Letter to Dr Baker on the

Means of procuring a Distinct and Favourable Kind of Smallpox_. Lond.

1767, and in a _Second Letter to Dr Baker_, 1767.

[939] W. Watson, M.D., _An Account of a Series of Experiments instituted

with a view of ascertaining the most successful Method of Inoculating the

Smallpox_. London, 1768.

[940] John Mudge, Surgeon at Plymouth, _A Dissertation on the Inoculated

Smallpox_. London, 1777. A copy of this essay was found in the library of

Dr Samuel Johnson. The Doctor was a friend of the author’s father, the

Rev. Archdeacon Mudge, whose published sermons he has characterized in one

of his most amusing balanced sentences of praise qualified with blame.

Johnson stood godfather to one of John Mudge’s children. Notes on “Dr

Johnson’s Library,” by A. W. Hutton.

[941] Edward Jenner, M.D., _Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the

Variolae Vaccinae, or Cowpox_. Lond. 1798, p. 56. See also his _Further

Observations on the Cowpox_. 1799.

[942] Langton cites the following advertisement put out on 18 June, 1767,

in his own district by Messrs Slatter and Duke, surgeons, of Ringwood,

Hants: “The first objection I shall take notice of is that the disorder

being in general so light, it is imagined there is danger of a second

infection [i.e. a natural attack]. Whenever this has been supposed to have

happened, I am certain the operation has failed, which not being

discovered by the operator, proves to me that he was not experienced in

the practice; for it may always be determined in four, five, or six days,

sometimes sooner; and if there is the least reason to doubt, it is very

easy to inoculate a second, third or fourth time, which may be done

without the least inconvenience. I have inoculated several patients three

or four times for their own satisfaction, having very little or perhaps no

eruption.”

[943] _Mem. Med. Soc. Lond._ IV. 114.

[944] John Covey, of Basingstoke, 8 May, 1786, in _London Medical

Journal_, VII. p. 180.

[945] _Address to the Inhabitants of Liverpool on the subject of a General

Inoculation for the Smallpox._ 1 September, 1781.

[946] The account of the London charity is taken from the _History of

Inoculation in Great Britain_ (1796) by Woodville, who became physician to

it in 1791.

[947] _Med. Obs. and Inquiries_, III. (1767), p. 287. The passage quoted

(p. 306, _note_) is almost exactly in the words of Hufeland long after,

with reference to the probable extinction of smallpox by cowpox. See his

_Journal_, X. pt. 2, p. 189.

[948] J. C. Lettsom, _A Letter to Sir Robert Barker, F.R.S. and G.

Stacpoole, Esq. upon General Inoculation_. London, 1778.

[949] _A Plan of the General Inoculating Dispensary, &c._ Lond. (no date).

[950] T. Dimsdale, _Thoughts on General and Partial Inoculation_. Lond.

1776. _An Introduction to the Plan of the Inoculation Dispensary._ 1778.

_Remarks on Dr Lettsom’s letter to Barker and Stacpoole._ 1779.

[951] Lettsom, _Obs. on Baron Dimsdale’s Remarks, &c._ 1779; and other

pamphlets on both sides.

[952] Clark, _Report of the Newcastle Dispensary_. 1789.

[953] Currie to Haygarth, 28 Nov. 1791, in _Sketch of a Plan, etc._, pp.

451, 207.

[954] J. C. Jenner, “An Account of a General Inoculation at Painswick.”

_Lond. Med. Journ._ VII. 163-8.

[955] _Gent. Magaz._ April, 1788, reported by the Hon. and Rev. Mr Stuart,

who was a grandson of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

[956] Monro, _Account of Inoculation in Scotland_, 1765; in his _Works_.

Edin. 1781, p. 693.

[957] _Statistical Account of Scotland._ 1791-99, III. 376.

[958] _Ibid._ IV. 130. It was about the year 1782 that the College of

Physicians of Edinburgh appointed a committee to inquire into the mode of

conducting the gratis inoculations of the poor, which had been tried at

Chester, Leeds, Liverpool, &c. in 1781-82. Haygarth, u. s. 1784, p. 207.

[959] _Ibid._ III. 582.

[960] _Ibid._ XX. 502-7.

[961] _Ibid._ XX. 348. Account by Rev. Abercromby Gordon, who gives in a

note (p. 349) the following instance of professional zeal: “A surgeon in

the north, presuming that self-interest has a stronger hold on man than

superstition, has lately opened a policy of insurance for the smallpox! If

a subscriber gives him two guineas for inoculating his child, the surgeon

in the event of the child’s death pays ten guineas to the parent; for

every guinea subscribed, four guineas, for half a guinea, two guineas, and

for a crown one guinea.”

[962] James Lucas, _Lond. Med. Journ._ X. 269.

[963] Currie to Haygarth, 28 Nov. 1791, in the latter’s _Sketch of a Plan,

&c._ p. 453.

[964] _A Conscious View of Circumstances and Proceedings respecting

Vaccine Inoculation._ Bath, 1800. The author was probably James Nooth,

senior surgeon to the Bath Hospital, who removed to London and practised

in Queen Anne Street, holding the appointment of surgeon to the Duke of

Kent. He wrote on cancer of the breast.

[965] _Tracts on Inoculation._ London, 1781.

[966] R. Pulteney, M.D., in a letter of 21 June, 1766, to Dr G. Baker,

given in his _Inquiry into the Merits of a Method of Inoculating the

Smallpox_. Lond. 1766.

[967] Pulteney, “Births, Deaths and Marriages of Blandford Forum,

1733-1772.” _Phil. Trans._ LXVIII. 615.

[968] Pulteney to Baker, App. to _Inquiry into the method of Inoculating_.

1766; Hutchins, _Dorsetshire_, I. 217.

[969] On 23 July, 1785, the apothecary makes a note in his book: “Some

inspectors are not sufficiently careful to send information to the

Hospital when children have had the smallpox.” MS. Records.

[970] _Experiments, &c._ 1768.

[971] Sir W. Watson, M.D., F.R.S., “On the Putrid Measles of London, 1763

and 1768.” _Med. Obs. and Inquiries_, IV. 153.

[972] Charles Kite, surgeon, Gravesend, “An Account of some anomalous

Appearances consequent to Inoculation of Smallpox.” _Memoirs Med. Soc.

Lond._ IV. (1794), p. 114.

[973] Fosbroke, _Lond. Med. Repository_. June, 1819, p. 466.

[974] Jenner to James Moore, in Baron’s _Life of Jenner_, II. 401: “Is not

that a precious anecdote for your new work?” See also _Court and Private

Life of Queen Charlotte_ (Journals of Mrs Papendiek). Lond. 1887, I. 41,

70, 270.

[975] In Baron, u. s.

[976] _A Conscious View, &c._ u. s.

[977] Earle, in Jenner’s _Further Observations_. 1799.

[978] T. Adams to Richard Pew, M.D., of Sherborne. _Lond. Med. and Phys.

Journ._ April, 1829.

[979] John Forbes, M.D., “Some Account of the Smallpox lately prevalent in

Chichester and its vicinity.” _Lond. Med. Reposit._ Sept. 1822, p. 218.

[980] _Discourse on Inoculation._ Eng. Transl. 1755.

[981] _A Series of Experiments, &c._ 1768.

[982] John Haygarth, M.B., _Inquiry how to prevent the Smallpox_. Chester,

1784, p. 154.

[983] _History of Inoculation in Britain._ Vol. I. London, 1796, p. 33.

[984] _History of Edinburgh._ Edin. 1779, p. 260.

[985] W. Hillary, _Rational and mechanical Essay on the Smallpox_. Lond.

1735.

[986] J. Barker, _The Nature of Inoculation explained and its Merits

stated_. London, 1769, p. 33. He taught that a depraved habit, by ill

diet, &c., “serves for a nidus wherein the variolous matter rests.” If the

variolous matter to be expelled is small, “by reason of natural health,

temperance, or the power of preparation,” the disease is of the distinct

kind; when large, of the confluent. “And wise indeed must he be who can

find out any laws respecting the reception and expulsion of diseases

superior on the whole to those which are original.” p. 9.

[987] “I have taken an account in this town [Halifax], and some parts of

the country, and have procured the same from several other towns

hereabouts, where the smallpox has been epidemical this last year, with as

much exactness as was possible.” _Phil. Trans._ XXXII. 211.

[988] “A small neighbouring market town.”

[989] “More than usually mortal.”

[990] “A small market town in Lancashire, including two neighbouring

villages.”

[991] Account taken “by a person of credit” and sent to Dr Whitaker. Jurin

says, more generally: “Taken in several places by a careful enquiry from

house to house.” _Account, &c._ 1724, p. 7.

[992] “At Uxbridge and in the neighbourhood, the smallpox having been

exceedingly fatal all thereabouts.”

[993] _Mr Maitland’s Account of Inoculating the Smallpox vindicated._ 2nd

ed. Lond. 1722.

[994] _Phil. Trans._ XXXIII. 379. “A short account of the Anomalous

Epidemic Smallpox beginning at Plymouth in August, 1724, and continuing to

the month of June, 1725, By the learned and ingenious Dr Huxham, physician

at Plymouth.”

[995] The totals are given in Jurin’s _Account_ for 1725. The ages are in

the original communication of the Rev. Mr Wasse, among the MS. papers

which Jurin had deposited with the Royal Society.

[996] The most singular thing in the Aynho experience is that there should

have been no cases in infants under two years. It was observed, however,

some two generations after this, that smallpox attacked children at the

earliest ages in the great towns (Haygarth, _Sketch of a Plan, &c._, 1793,

p. 31), and even in the worst conditions of infancy it has attacked

relatively few in the first three months of life. Again, it is nearly as

remarkable that there should have been only three cases at Aynho in the

third year of life and only four in the fourth. However, the fewness of

cases in the five first years of life must be taken as exceptional, even

for a village epidemic. If Nettleton, who made the first of these censuses

of smallpox epidemics and suggested to Jurin that they should be carried

out elsewhere, had given the ages, he would certainly have included some

in infancy, for he mentions, in the course of his inoculation experiences,

particular cases at nine months, eighteen months, etc.

[997] Frewen, _Phil. Trans._ XXXVII. 108.

[998] See above, pp. 485-6 and 490-1.

[999] Deering, _Nottingham vetus et nova_. 1751, pp. 78, 82. He says, in

an essay on smallpox (_Improved Method of treating Smallpox._ Nottingham,

1737) that he treated fifty-one cases in the epidemic of 1736, of which

only three proved fatal.

[1000] _Gent. Magaz._ 1741, p. 704.