[676]Morant’sHist, of Essex,I.50.
[677]Hist. MSS. Commission,IX.277 b.
[678]Notes and Queries, 6th series,II.524.
[679]Cal. State Papers.
[680]Nichols,Hist. of Leicestershire.
[681]Cal. S. P.
[682]Cal. State Papers.Eliz. 1581-90 (Lemon), pp. 45, 70.
[683]Graunt’sReflections on Bills of Mortality. 3rd ed., Lond. 1665, p. 135.
[684]Hist. MSS. Com.
[685]Saunders,Hist. of Boston, p. 228.
[686]Duke of Rutland’s MSS.Hist. MSS. Com., May 24, 1586.
[687]Saunders,l. c.
[688]Notes and Queries, 2nd series,XI.497.
[689]Blomefield’sNorfolk.
[690]Ibid.and Gawdy MSS.Hist. MSS. Com.
[691]Glover’sHist. of Derby, p. 613.
[692]Archaeologia,VI.80.
[693]Townsend’sHist. of Leominster, p. 59.
[694]Sykes,Local Records of Northumberland and Durham, p. 80.
[695]Cal. S. P., Domestic, Eliz. ed. Lemon.
[696]Corporation MSS. of Plymouth.Hist. MSS. Com.X.pt. 4, p. 539.
[697]Notes and Queries, 6th series,III.477.
[698]Dunsford’sHistorical Memoirs of Tiverton, p. 38.
[699]Bill of Mortality for the week ending October 20, 1603.Broadside in Guildhall Library, with summary, on margin, of the mortalities in 1563 and 1592-93.
[700]Cal. State Papers, 1591-94, p. 312.
[701]Ibid.p. 340.
[702]Ibid.1595-97, p. 45, May 26, 1595:
“Arguments in proof of the advantages to be derived by the City of London from stopping up the town ditch:—It is the origin of infection, and the only noisome place in the city. In the last great plague, more died about there than in three parishes besides; these fields are the chiefest walks for recreation of the cityzens, and though the ditch were cast every second year, yet the water coming from the kennel and slaughter-houses will be very contagious. It is no material defence for the city, and half the ditch has been stopped these many years.”
[703]London’s Remembrancer, by John Bell, Clerk of the Company of Parish Clerks. London, 1665. He says: “I shall begin with the year 1593, being the first year in which any account of the christenings and burials was kept. I cannot find any record of more antiquity than that of this year in the Company of Parish Clerks Hall.” However we can now point to original weekly bills of mortality of 1532 and 1535, to abstracts of weekly plague-burials in 1563-66, to the figures from one weekly bill of a series in 1574, and to abstracts of 1578-83.
[704]The total of 25,886 was copied, probably from the broadside of 1603, into an anonymous essay of 1665, calledReflections on the Bills of Mortality, the total of plague alone being given as 11,503, evidently by a misprint for 15,003. At the same time a table was given, professing to be of the weekly deaths from all causes, in one column, and from plague in another, from March 13 to December 18, 1593. The column of plague-deaths sums up to 11,110, but the total of 11,503 (which originated in a misprint) is printed at the foot of the column as if that were the summation. The column of deaths from all causes is made to sum up to 25,886, the actual sum being 25,817. But the weekly mortalities in it for those weeks that had little plague are an absurdity for 1593. Whatever the source of this table, it is not genuine for 1593, and was disclaimed by Bell, the clerk of Parish Clerks’ Hall, whose essay was written in 1665 to correct that and other errors about former plagues in London.
[705]Cal. State Papers.Addenda. Elizabeth.
[706]Cussan’sHist. of Hertfordshire.
[707]Turner’sHist. of Hertford, p. 268.
[708]Glover’sHist. of Derby, p. 613.
[709]Harwood’sHist. of Lichfield, p. 304.
[710]Nichols,Leicestershire(Town records of Leicester); Kelly, inTrans. Roy. Hist. Soc.VI. (1877), p. 391 (at least 20 houses shut up).
[711]Owen and Blakeway.
[712]Parish registers in Townsend’sLeominster, p. 59.
[713]Corporation MSS. Canterbury, in 9th Report ofHist. MSS. Commission, pp. 159 a, 160 a, b. “This plague continued from the end of September to the month of January.”
[714]Parish Register of Penrith: “A sore plage was in London, Nottinghome, Derbie and Lincolne in the year 1593” (Jefferson’sCumberland, I. 19).
[715]Cal. Stale Papers.Addenda. Elizabeth.
[716]Syer’sMemorials of Bristol. The excessive mortality at Leominster (41 burials in September, 1597) may have been an effect of the famine. (Townsend’sHistory, p. 59.)
[717]Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1597, § 10, p. 347.
[718]Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1597, p. 501.
[719]Sykes,Local Records, p. 82.
[720]Clarkson’sHist. of Richmond.
[721]Camden’sBritannia, p. 175.
[722]Jefferson’sCumberland,I.273. But these are the same figures as for Penrith.
[723]Ibid.I.391.
[724]Parish register of Penrith, in Jefferson,l. c.
[725]Notes and Queries.6th series,II.524.
[726]Exchequer Rolls of Scotland,X.594. Edin. 1887.
[727]Burgh Records of Aberdeen(Spalding Club),I.66.
[728]Exchequer Rolls Scot.,XI.p. lxviii.
[729]Ibid.
[730]Burgh Records, pp. 88, 90, 130, 165.
[731]Register of the Privy Council, Scotland,I.5.
[732]Cal. S. P.Scot. (Thorpe).
[733]Burgh Records, pp. 222, 231, 244, 246.
[734]Cal. S. P.Scot. 18 Nov. 1548. The Rhinegrave recovered, and came to Edinburgh on the 26th.
[735]Reg. P. C. Scot.I.279-81.
[736]Ibid.I.281-2.
[737]Ane Breve Description of the Pest, Edin. 1568. Reprinted, for the Bannatyne Club, by James Skene of Rubislaw. Edin. 1840.
[738]Diurnall of Occurrences, in Chambers.
[739]Cited by R. Chambers (Domestic Annals of Scotland,I.) from M. Napier’s notes to the Spottiswoode Club edition of Spottiswoode’s History.
[740]Op. cit.I.53.
[741]Burgh Records of Canongate.Maitland Club, Miscellany,II.313 (in Chambers).
[742]Chambers,I.94.
[743]Burgh Records of Glasgow, 1573-1581.Maitland Club, p. 27.
[744]Reg. P. C. Scot.,II.415.
[745]Ibid.p. 419.
[746]Hist. MSS. Com.,IV.539.
[747]Reg. Scots P. C.,III.229.
[748]Ibid.
[749]Ibid.III.679.
[750]Reg. Scots P. C.s. d.
[751]Chronicle of Perth, Bannatyne Club, p. 4, and Chambers,I.154.
[752]Reg. Scots P. C.,III.727.
[753]Calderwood’sHist. of Kirk of Scotland,IV.366: “It was first known to be in Simon Mercerbank’s house.” Birell’sDiary(1532-1605) in Chambers,I.157.
[754]Scots P. C.,III.746.
[755]Ibid.V.56.
[756]Moysie, in Chambers,I.157.
[757]The Diary of Mr James Melville, 1556-1601.Bannatyne Club. Edin. 1829, p. 153.
[758]Marioreybank’sAnnals, in Chambers.
[759]Melville’sDiary, p. 162.
[760]Melville, p. 173; Calderwood, cited by Chambers;Cal. Cecil Papers,III.298, 310.
[761]Cal. Cecil Papers,III.321.
[762]Memorabilia of Glasgow, in Chambers.
[763]Scots Privy Council.
[764]Birell, in Chambers.
[765]Scots P. C.
[766]Calderwood,V.655.
[767]Two men sent to buy nolt in Galloway for the needs of the borough of Dumfries were stopped, with 38 head of cattle, by the provost and others of Wigton, at the Water of Crie, the cattle being impounded at Wigton for eight days so that they became lean. A hundred merks compensation was demanded.Scots Privy Council,V.
[768]Scots P. C.,VI.164.
[769]Aberdeen Kirk Session Records, Spalding Club, 1846, Calderwood (cited by Chambers, I. 319) says that the year 1600 was one of famine, and that there was also a great death of young children, six or seven being buried in Edinburgh in a day.
[770]Scots Privy Council,VI.under the respective dates.
[771]Burgh Records.
[772]Smith’sCork,II.34.
[773]Cal. State Papers.Domestic.
[774]Smith’sCork, on the authority of MS. annals.
[775]Annals of Loch Cé.Rolls ed.,II.289.
[776]Brabazon to T. Cromwell.Cal. State Papers.Irish.
[777]Cal. State Papers.Irish, 1566-7.
[778]State Papers(Record Office), Irish, 1567, No. 54. Letter from Lord Treasurer Winchester and Ed. Baeshe, to the Lord Deputy. Mr Froude’s summary of it is that “the clammy vapour had stolen into their lungs and poisoned them,” and again, “the reeking vapour of the charnel house.” I have had difficulty in deciphering the letter, but I can make out “being a graveyard where all their buriall,” etc.
[779]Cal. State Papers.Irish.
[780]Thady Dowling, p. 41.
[781]Cal. State Papers.Domestic. Sept. 1, 1575.
[782]Stubbs, in his edition of Roger of Howden (Rolls series, No. 51,II.249), on the evidence of the Pipe Roll of 1166.
[783]Memorials of London in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, ed. Riley.
[784]Stow’sSurvey of London, pop. ed. (1890), p. 66.
[785]Hall’sChronicle, ed. of 1809, p. 632.
[786]This account of the Black Assizes at Oxford in 1577 was brought to light, like so many other things from the register of Merton, first by Anthony Wood in hisHist. and Antiq. of the Univ. of Oxford(ed. Gutch,II.189). It was copied in full, from the original Latin text, in 1758, by John Ward, LL.D., and sent to the Royal Society, in whosePhil. Trans.(vol.L.p. 699) it is printed, with remarks, by Tho. Birch, D.D., Sec. R. S.
[787]Howard,The State of the Prisons in England and Wales. 3rd ed., Warrington, 1784, p. 342.
[788]Hist, and Antiq. Univ. Oxford, ed. Gutch,II.188-192.
[789]Georgius Edrichus, ‘In Libros aliquot pauli Aeginetae Hypomnemata quaedam.’ Londini apud Tomam East 1588 (without pagination).
[790]The passage which Anthony Wood thought to relate to the gaol fever at Oxford in 1577 is the following, under the heading “De morbis publicé grassantibus:” “Publice grassari morbos vidimus Oxonii, et una nocte simul plus sexaginta agrotasse (sic) novimus, et in vicinis postridie pagis, eo forte aëre delato, fere centum. Quod etiam eodem tempore, regnante tum Edwardo sexto, Cantabrigiae evenit, cum duo simul liberi ducis inclyti Suffolchiae ibi morerentur. Nec tamen Oxonienses ulli fere interierunt, quod coeli constitutio apud nos quam ibi salubrior sit. Sed iis ita succurrendum morbis putamus, ut Brittanico sudore (sic enim vocant) opitulari solemus.”
[791]Anthony Wood, as we have seen in the text, put together his version of the fever of 1577 from the Merton College register, from Stow’sAnnals, and from Ethredge’s reference to the sweat of 1551. In 1758, John Ward, LL.D., copied the passage in the Merton register and sent it to the Royal Society; whose secretary, the Rev. Dr Thomas Birch, appended to it in thePhilosophical Transactionssome annotations—“copying,” as Carlyle said of him with reference to some Cromwell matter, “from Wood’sAthenae; and has committed—as who does not?—several errors,” his annotations being “sedulous but ineffectual”—to the extent of fixing on the original correct narrative an accretion of mistakes (600 for 60, sweating sickness for gaol fever, &c.). Trusting to the respectable Birch, Bancroft in hisEssay on the Yellow Fever, with observations concerning febrile contagion &c.(Lond., 1811) has based a theory that the Oxford epidemic was not typhus at all. Murchison (Continued Fevers of Great Britain, 2nd ed. 1873, p. 103) has also been misled, and has found himself therefore at a disadvantage in answering Bancroft’s empty verbalisms about the invariable reproduction of typhus from some previous case. F. C. Webb, in a paper “An Historical Account of the Gaol Fever,”Trans. Epidem. Soc.for 1857, p. 63, has not used the Oxford case for any argumentative purpose, but he has, like the others, given the facts erroneously. He gives no particulars of the Exeter Black Assize.
[792]Howard,On Lazarettos in Europe, &c. Warrington, 1789, p. 231: “But as I have found, in some prisons abroad, cells and dungeons as offensive and dirty as any I have observed in this country, where however the distemper was unknown, I am obliged to look out for some additional cause of its production. I am of opinion that the sudden change ofdietand lodging so affects thespiritsofnewconvicts that the general causes of putrid fever exert an immediate effect upon them. Hence it is common to see them sicken and die in a short time with very little apparent illness.” The last words are important.
[793]Sylva Sylvarum, or A Natural History.In ten centuries. Cent. 10, §§ 914-15. Spedding’s ed.II.646.
[794]Holinshed’sChronicle. New edition by Hoker, London, 1587, pp. 1547-8.
[795]These statements by Hoker, chamberlain of Exeter, are sufficiently circumstantial; but they do not quite suit the theory of a writer in theDict. Nat. Biog., under “Drake, Sir Bernard” that the ship was “a great Portugal ship,” called the Lion of Viana, with an English master, taken by Bernard Drake in Brittany. No doubt such a capture is stated in theCal. State Papers, 1585, p. 295 (the reference given), Sir W. Raleigh’s ship the “Jobe” being included in the same petition; but nothing is said of Dartmouth as the port to which the two vessels were brought, or of Exeter as the place where their captains were imprisoned. It is of importance for the theory of the Exeter gaol fever to know whether Drake’s prisoners were Portuguese fishermen or not, and Hoker may be supposed to have known.
[796]The author of the misadventure. He succeeded in getting home to Crediton, where he died on the 12th April, four weeks after the Assizes began.
[797]Sir George Nicholls, in hisHistory of the English Poor Law, 1854,I.113, threw out the suggestion that the decay was in the old walled towns, and that it was compensated by the rise of populations on less hampered sites. This theory has been adopted by some later writers.
[798]Calendar of State Papers.Domestic, Hen. VIII.
[799]Becon’sWorks, 3 vols.II.fol. 15-16.
[800]Continuation of Fabyan’sChronicle.
[801]GreyfriarsChronicle, Camden Soc.LIII., 1852. Preface by J. G. Nichols, xxiv.
[802]Strype’s ed. of Stow’sSurvey of London.
[803]In the Rolls of the Middlesex Sessions (Middlesex Record Society), there occur numerous entries of inquests on deaths in the gaol of Newgate from the 25th year of Elizabeth: a few of these are from plague; but by far the larger number are from “the pining sickness,” a malady which sometimes cut off several prisoners in the same few days and after a brief illness. In one of these epidemics (Dec. 1586-Feb. 1587), a single case is called “pestilent fever,” the other seven being “pining sickness.” Next year, June 19, there is a case of bloody flux, and, on June 24, a case of “pining sickness.” The other periods when the disease so named was epidemic in Newgate were Feb.-May, 1595, June and July, 1597, March, 1598, and March-April, 1602. The pining sickness was probably a generic term, and may have included chronic disease; there is a solitary case entered as ailing for as long a period as eight months, the usual duration of the sickness being one, two, or three days up to three or four weeks.
This place will serve to notice the strange teaching about “parish infection” which has received currency among the writers of good repute as authorities. Guy (Public Health, Lectures, 1870,I.23) says the gaol distemper was an old offender known as thesickness of the house: “I think I recognize it in the London Bills from 1606 to 1665 as theParish Infection.” The column of figures in the London Bills which has been taken to show the weekly prevalence of a disease, otherwise unheard of, “parish infection,” really shows the number of “parishes infected.” The earlier bills showed, in the corresponding column, the number of parishes clear (“parish.clere” or “paroch.clere”). By adding up the number of parishes infected in each of the 52 weeks of a bad plague-year, a total of some thousands is got, and that total has been taken to be the annual mortality from “parish infection”—a pure myth. The original author of this singular mistake appears to have been Marshall, in hisMortality of the Metropolis, London, 1832, p. 67. Of the “parish infection,” he says: “The disease below is specified by Mr Bell in hisRemembrancer[1665]; it is probably the same as exhibited under the name of spotted fever.” What Bell “specifies” is not another disease, but the number of parishes in the City and suburbs infected with the plague in each week of the year.
[804]Annales Monastici, Rolls series, No. 19. Chronicle by an unknown author (St Albans) temp. Hen. VI., 1422-31:—“Quaedam infirmitas reumigata invasit totum populum, quaemuredicitur: et sic senes cum junioribus inficiebat quod magnum numerum ad funus letale deducebat.”
In the Report of the Irish Local Government Board, Medical Department, 1890, influenza is identified under the name “slaedan,” or prostration, which was epidemic in Ireland in 1326 or 1328, the same epidemic being called “murre” in theAnnals of Clonmacnoise. The use of the word “mure” in the St Albans Chronicle is just a century later. Murrain (ormorenain Latin chronicles) is probably the modern survival of “mure” or “murre.”
[805]I take this summary from Short (Chronology, etc. I. 204), who omits his authority, probably the foreign writers to whom he is usually indebted in the earlier period. The first part of Theophilus Thompson’sAnnals of Influenza(Sydenham Society) is little else than extracts from Short, and therefore of foreign origin.
[806]Cal. State Papers.Domestic,sub dato.
[807]Thus in the continuation of Fabyan’s Chronicle under the year 1512, the Marquis of Dorset, sent into Spain with 10,000 men, is said to have “returned in winter by reason of the flix (dysentery).” And in Hall’sChronicle(ed. of 1807, p. 523), we have particulars of the very serious sickness in his army in Biscay; owing to their diet being largely of garlic and fruits, and their drink being hot wines in hot weather, “there fell sick 3000 of the flix, and thereof died 1800 men.”
[808]Continuator of Fabyan’sChronicle, sub anno. There is an almost identical entry inA London Chronicle of Henry VII. and Henry VIII.(Camden Miscellany, vol. V. 1859), but under the year 1539, in a hot and dry summer. The most discrepant date and designation of the epidemic of those years are those given in Hardiman’sHistory of Galway(p. 40): “This charitable institution [St Bridget’s Hospital] was fortunately completed in the year 1543, when the sweating sickness broke out, and raged with great violence, destroying multitudes of the natives, and particularly the tradesmen of the town.”
[809]The term “hot ague” occurs as early as 1518, in a letter of 18 July (Cal. State Papers).
[810]Wriothesley,A Chronicle of England during the reigns of the Tudors(1457-1559). Camden Society,II.139.
Anthony Wood also enters for Oxford, under 1557, “A pestilential disease to the settling of some and the driving away of many; the causes of which proceeding from the eating of green fruit, the Commissary commanded that none should be sold in the market or elsewhere in Oxford.”
[811]Fabyan’sChronicle, p. 711.
[812]Stow’sAnnales, ed. Howse, p. 631. Speed also has a paragraph, unusual with him, on the state of health in the year of Queen Mary’s death (1658), in which the mortality among the clergy is specially mentioned.
[813]Extracts from Harrison’s MS.Chronologieby Furnivall, in Appendix toElizabethan England. Camelot series, 1890, p. 267. His famine prices, and the enormous fall of them after harvest, are the same as given by Stow.
[814]State Papers, Record Office.
[815]John Jones, M.D.The Dyall of Ague, London, 1564?
[816]Calendar of State Papers.Foreign,II.1558, p. 398.
[817]Calendar of State Papers.Foreign,II.1558, p. 400.
[818]New Observations, Natural, Moral, Civil, Political and Medical, on City, Town and Country Bills of Mortality.By Thomas Short, M.D., London, 1750.
[819]2 vols. London, 1749.
[820]Calendar of Cecil MSS.,II.525.
[821]Phil. Trans.XVIII.105
[822]Graunt,Reflections on the Bills of Mortality, 3rd ed. 1665.
[823]Opera, ed. Greenhill, p. 160.
[824]Ibid.p. 169.
[825]Giraldus Cambrensis, Rolls series, No. 21, vol.V.Topogr. Hiberniae, p. 67:—“Advenarum, tamen, una his fere est passio et unica vexatio. Ob humida namque nutrimenta, immoderatum ventris fluxum vix in primis ullus evadit.” Flux among the English troops in Ireland in 1172 is mentioned by Radulphus de Diceto,Imag. Histor.I.348.
[826]Works of James I., p. 301.
[827]Sloane MS.(Brit. Mus.) No. 389, folios 147-153. It bears no date, but is marked in the catalogue “xv and xvi cent.,” as if belonging either to the end of the fifteenth century or the beginning of the sixteenth.
[828]Hensler, who reproduced in 1783 (Geschichte der Lustseuche, App. p. 53) these and other particulars from one of the two remaining copies of Pinctor’s work (in the possession of Professor Cotunni of Naples), collated with the other copy in the Garelli library at Vienna, finds in the concluding dedication of the book to Alexander Borgia a sinister meaning, as if the supreme pontiff had been himself a victim of thegrande maladie à la mode; it is easier, he says, to extricate the sense than the syntax of the passage.
[829]There was another edition in 1539, and several more following. Paynel also added a short section, “A Remedy for the Frenche pockes,” to his book entitled,A Moche Profitable Treatise against the Pestilence. Translated into English by Thomas Paynel, chanon of Martin [Merton] Abbey, London, 1534.
[830]Extracts from the Council Register of the Burgh of Aberdeen, 1398-1570.Edited for the Spalding Club [by Dr John Stuart], vol.I.1844, p. 425.
[831]Phil. Trans., vol. 42 (1743), p. 420: “Part of a Letter from Mr Macky, professor of History, to Mr Mac Laurin, professor of Mathematics in the University of Edinburgh, and by him communicated to the President of the Royal Society; being an Extract from the Books of the Town Council of Edinburgh, relating to a Disease there, supposed to be Venereal, in the year 1497.”
[832]Simpson (l. c.) quotes the Proclamation from the original minute-book, almost in the above spelling; it is in Vol. I. of theTown Council Records, fol. 33-34, and is entitled in the rubric “Ane Grangore Act.”
[833]“On Syphilis in Scotland in the Fifteenth Century,”Trans. Epidem. Soc.N. S. 1. (1862), p. 149. Two of the entries are published in theCriminal Trials of Scotland, 1. 117; the others were collected for Simpson by Mr Joseph Robertson from the High-Treasurer’s Accounts in the Register House, Edinburgh. These accounts have since been published in the Rolls series (vol.I.356, 361, 378 (bis), 386).
[834]Op. cit.I.437.
[835]Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York.Edited by Nicolas, London, 1830, p. 104.
[836]Stow’sSurvey of London, “Bridge Ward Without.” He ascribes these informations to “Robert Fabian,” both in the text and in the margin. The statement is certainly not made in Fabyan’sChronicle of Englandunder the year 1506, or other year of the decade, nor is it indexed as occurring in some earlier connexion.
[837]Bernard André’s Works. Rolls series, No. 10.
[838]Erasmi Epistolae, folio. London, 1642, p. 1789 e.
[839]Anthony Wood,Hist. Univ. Oxford, ed. Gutch,I.514. Freind (Hist. of Physic, Pt.II.p. 345) says that the French pox is mentioned in the will of Colet, dean of St Paul’s, 1518.
[840]The Supplication of Beggerscompyled by Symon Fyshe. AnnoMCCCCCXXIIII.Lond. 1546.
[841]Parliamentary History,I.494.
[842]Bullein’sDialogue of the Fever Pestilence, 1564. Early English Text Society, Extra series, 1888, p. 122.
[843]Bullein’sBulwarke of Defence against all Sicknes, Sornes, and Woundes, etc., 1562, foll. 2, 68.
[844]Certain Works of Chirurgerie newly compiled and published by T. Gale.London, 1563.
[845]Dyall of Agues, cap.VIII.“Of the Pestilential fever, or plage, or boche.”
[846]William Clowes,A short and profitable Treatise touching the cure of the disease called (Morbus Gallicus) by unctions, London, 1579.
[847]‘A Prooved Practice for all young Chirurgeons, concerning burning with gunpowder, and woundes made with Gunshot, Sword, Halbard, Pike, Launce or such other. Hereto is adjoyned a Treatise of the French or Spanish Pocks, written by John Almenar, a Spanish Phisician. Also a commodious collection of Aphorismes, both English and Latine, taken out of an old written coppy. Published for the benefit of his country by William Clowes, Maister in Chirurgery.’ New ed., 1591.
[848]A most excellent and compendious Method, etc. London, 1588.
[849]Read uses, among other terms, one that has played a great part in the modern pathology of syphilis. Among the points to be noticed are,—“if recent or old, if the ulcers or whelks be many, whether pustulous matter orgummiesubstance appear.”
[850]John Banister, ‘A needefull new and necessarie treatise of Chyrurgerie, briefly comprehending the generall and particular curation of ulcers ... drawen forth of sundrie worthy writers.... Hereunto is annexed certaine experimentes of mine owne invention.’ London, 1575.
[851]Peter Lowe,An easie, certaine and perfect method to cure and prevent the Spanish sicknes, Lond. 1596. For an account of the book seeThe Life and Works of Maister Peter Lowe. By James Finlayson, M.D. Glasgow, 1889.
[852]A Treatise concerning the plague and the pox, discovering as well the means how to preserve from the danger of these infectious contagions, or how to cure those which are infected with either of them.London, 1652.
[853]Burnet (History of his own Time,I.395-6, Oxford, 1823) retails a good deal of unsavoury gossip concerning the disease in noble and princely personages after the Restoration.
[854]Natural and Political Observations upon the Bills of Mortality.By Captain John Graunt, F.R.S. Preface dated from Birchin Lane, January, 1662.
[855]The origin of syphilis from leprosy has been maintained in a modern work by Friedr. Alex. Simon,Kritische Geschichte des Ursprungs, der Pathologie und Behandlung der Syphilis, Tochter und widerum Mutter des Aussatzes. Hamburg, 1857-8.
[856]Hirsch,Geographical and Historical Pathology(Translated),II.67, 68, 81.
[857]In Hensler, p. 14, and Appendix, p. 11.
[858]Ibid., App. p. 15.
[859]In Hensler, Appendix, p. 66.
[860]The rise of the pox in the Italian wars, with its dispersion over all Europe, comes into “The Smallpox, a Poem” by “Andrew Tripe, M.D.,” London, 1748:
“Whip! thro’ both camps, halloo! it ran,Nor uninfected left a man ...Hence soon thro’ Italy it flewVeiled for a while from mortal view,When suddenly in various modes,It shone display’d in shankers, nodes,Swell’d groins, and pricking shins, and headachesAnd a long long long string of dread aches ...From thence with every sail unfurl’dIt traversed almost all the world ...Until at length this Stygian furyWorked its foul way to our blest Drury,Where still Lord Paramount it reigns,Pregnant with sharp nocturnal pains,” etc.
[861]I do not include among the good evidence the often quoted letter of Peter Martyr to a professor of Greek at Salamanca, under the date of “nonis Aprilis, 1488,” in which “morbus Gallicus” is used as well as the Spanish name “las bubas.” It seems to me certain that the date should be 1498, or something else than 1488, the correspondence having gone on until 1525. The same kind of misdating occurs among the printed letters of Erasmus.
[862]This letter is printed in hisOpuscula, Papiae, 1496. Attention was first called to it by Thiene, in his essay confuting the doctrine of the West-Indian origin of syphilis.
[863]In Hensler, App. p. 108.
[864]Manardus,Epist. Med.lib.VII.epist. 2. Basil, 1549, p. 137 (as cited by Hirsch). The first letter of Manardus “de erroribus Sym. Pistoris de Lypczk circa morbum Gallicum,” was printed in 1500 (Hensler, p. 47).
[865]I quote it from Hensler,Geschichte der Lustseuche die zu ende des xv Jahr hunderts in Europa ausbrach. Altona, 1783, Appendix, p. 109.
[866]Mezeray,Histoire de France,II.777.
[867]The diagnosis in De Comines’ text appears to have struck the editors of the chief edition of his work, that of 1747; for they have appended a footnote to the passage, which is a superfluity unless it be meant to express surprise: “Charles VIII. malade de la petite vérole à l’age de vingt-deux ans.”
[868]Martin,Histoire de France,VII.257, 283.
[869]Handbook of Geographical and Historical Pathology.Translated by C. Creighton, 3 vols. London, 1883-86,II.92-98.
[870]Miscellaneous Works of the late Robert Willan, M.D., F.R.S., containing an Inquiry into the Antiquity of the Smallpox, Measles, and Scarlet Fever, etc.Edited by Ashby Smith, M.D., London, 1821.
[871]Th. Nöldeke,Geschichte der Araber und Perser, nach Tabari. Leyden, 1879, pp. 218, 219.
[872]The term “autonomy” in the foregoing is used according to the exposition which I originally gave of it in an address to the British Medical Association (1883) on “The Autonomous Life of the Specific Infections” (Brit. Med. Journ., Aug. 4, 1883). The semi-independence of constitutional states has been dealt with in my book,Illustrations of Unconscious Memory in Disease. London, 1885.
[873]The South-African controversy, which became acute, was carried on in journals of the colony (theSouth African Medical Journalabout 1883 and 1884 is a likely source of information), but some echoes of it were heard in letters to theBritish Medical Journal, 1884. A few years ago a similar diagnostic difficulty arose, not in an African race, but among the inmates of a Paris hospital. In the smallpox wards of the Hôpital St Antoine, a number of cases occurred, one of them in a nurse, another in an assistant physician, of a particular skin-disease, which was either discrete or confluent, lasted about ten days, and was attended by fever up to 40° C. or 41° C. Yet these cases were discriminated from smallpox; they were diagnosed, and have been recorded, as an epidemic of ecthyma. (Du Castel,Gazette des Hôpitaux, 1881, No. 122, quoted in theJahresbericht.)
[874]Krankheiten des Orients.Erlangen, 1847, p. 127.
[875]History of Physic,II.190.
[876]Gruner, a learned professor of Jena, who made collections of works or passages relating to syphilis and to the English sweat, published also in 1790 a collection of medieval chapters or sentences on smallpox, “De Variolis et Morbillis fragmenta medicorum Arabistarum,” including the whole of Gaddesden’s chapter but omitting the earlier and more important chapter from Gilbert. Gruner correctly says at the end of his extracts: “while the Arabists write thus, they seem to have followed their Arabic guides, and to have repeated what they received from the latter.” This is obvious from the text of the chapters themselves: some quote more often than others from Avicenna, Rhazes and Isaac; but it is clear that they all base upon the Arabians. The substance is the same in them all; it is a merely verbal handling of Arabic observation and theory. There are no concrete experiences or original additions, from which one might infer that they were familiar at first hand with smallpox and measles. Häser, however, seems to take these chapters in the medieval compends as evidence of the general prevalence of smallpox in Europe in the Middle Ages. As he finds little writing about smallpox when modern medical literature began, he is driven into the paradox that epidemics of smallpox had actually become rarer again in the sixteenth century (III.p. 69). But the sixteenth-century references to smallpox, although they are indeed scanty, are at the same time the earliest authentic accounts of it in Western Europe.
[877]This intention is most clearly expressed by Valescus de Tharanta: “Then let him be wrapped in a woollen cloth of Persian, or at least of red, so that by the sight of the red cloth the blood may be led to the exterior and so be kept at no excessive heat, according to the tenour of the sixth canon [of Avicenna].”ApudGruner, p. 46.
[878]History of Physic, Pt.II.p. 280.
[879]Rosa Anglica.Papiae, 1492.
[880]Chronica Majora.Rolls ed.V.452.
[881]Rolls of Parliament.
[882]Early English Text Society’s edition by Skeat. Passus xvi. (108), and Passus vii.
[883]Trench, in hisSelect Glossary, has adopted the derivation of measles frommisellus, without apparently knowing that John of Gaddesden had actually used “mesles” for a form ofmorbilli. The derivation of measles frommisellushas been summarily rejected by Skeat, who thinks that “the spelling with the simple vowele, instead ofaeorea, makes all the difference. The confusion between the words is probably quite modern.” Perhaps I ought not to contradict a philologist on his own ground; but there is no help for it. I know of four instances in which the simple voweleis used in spelling the name of the disease that is associated with smallpox, the English equivalent ofmorbilli. In a letter of July 14, 1518, from Pace, dean of St Paul’s to Wolsey (Cal. State Papers, Henry VIII.II.pt. 1), it is said, “They do die in these parts [Wallingford] in every place, not only of the small pokkes and mezils, but also of the great sickness.” In theDescription of the Pestby Dr Gilbert Skene, of Edinburgh (Edin. 1568, reprinted for the Bannatyne Club, 1840, p. 9), he mentions certain states of weather “quhilkis also signifeis the Pokis, Mesillis and siclik diseisis of bodie to follow.” And if a Scotsman’s usage be not admitted, an Oxonian, Cogan, says, “when the small pockes and mesels are rife,” and another Oxonian, Thomas Lodge, in hisTreatise of the Plague(London, 1603, Cap. iii.) says: “When as Fevers are accompanied with Small Poxe, Mesels, with spots,” etc. On the other hand, Elyot, in theCastel of Health(1541), Phaer in theBook of Children, (1553), Clowes in hisProved Practice, and Kellwaye (1593) write the word withea. There is, indeed, no uniformity, just as one might have expected in the sixteenth century. Again, Shakespeare (Coriolanus, Act III., sceneI) spells the word witheawhere it is clearly the same word that is used inThe Vision of Piers the Ploughmanin a generic sense and in the spelling of “meseles:”—“Those meazels which we disdain should tetter us.” Lastly, there are not two words in the Elizabethan dictionaries, one withesignifying lepers, and another witheasignifying the disease ofmorbilli. In Levins’Manipulus Vocabulorum, we find “ye Maysilles” =variolae, but there is no word “mesles” =leprosi. There was only one word, with the usual varieties of spelling; and in course of time it came to be restricted in meaning tomorbilli, Gaddesden’s early use of “mesles” in that sense having doubtless helped to determine the usage.
[884]Harl. MS., No. 2378. So far as I have observed, there is no prescription for “mesles,” or for smallpox under its Latin name or under any English name that might correspond thereto. Moulton’sThis is The Myrror or Glasse of Helth(? 1540), which reproduces these medieval prescriptions with their headings, is equally silent about smallpox and measles.
[885]Willan’sMiscellaneous Works. “An Inquiry into the Antiquity of the Smallpox, Measles, and Scarlet Fever.” London, 1821, p. 98. The MS. is Harleian, No. 585.
[886]Sandoval, cited by Hecker,Der Englische Schweiss. Berlin, 1834, p. 80.
[887]MS. Harl., 1568.
[888]There is a fine copy of the earliest printed version in the British Museum, with “Sanctus Albanus” for colophon. The same text was reprinted often in the years following by London printers—in 1498, 1502, 1510, 1515 (twice), and 1528.
[889]Camden Society, ed. Gairdner, 1876, p. 87.
[890]Walsingham,Hist. Angliae,I.299. AlsoChronicon Angliae a quodam Monacho,sub anno1362.
[891]“Also manie died of the smallpocks, both men, women and children.”
[892]History of the Smallpox, 1817. Blomefield, also, in hisHistory of Norfolk, quotes the passage about “pockys” correctly from the “Fruit of Times,” applies it to Norwich, to which city it had no special relation, and then says that this is the first mention of “small pocks.”
[893]Fabyan’sChronicle. Ed. Ellis, p. 653.
[894]Levins,Manipulus Vocabulorum, 1570. Camden Society’s edition, column 158.
[895]Lettres du Roy Louis XII.Brusselle, 1712,IV.335.
[896]Cal. State Papers.
[897]“Item, que à son grand desplaisir il ait esté naguaires mal disposé d’une maladie nommée la petitte verolle, dont à present, graces à Dieu, il est recouvert et passé tout dangier.”Lettres du Roy Louis XII.,IV.260. Brusselle, 1712.
[898]Cal. State Papers.
[899]Cal. State Papers.
[900]Edited by Gairdner for the Camden Society, 1880.
[901]Bannatyne Club’s reprint, 1840, pp. 9-10.
[902]The Loseley Manuscripts.Edited by Kempe. London, 1836, p. 315.
[903]A Defensative against the Plague ... whereunto is annexed a short treatise of the small Poxe, how to govern and help those that are infected therewith.London, 1593.
[904]Francis Davison’sPoetical Rapsodie. The poem of Spilman occurs at p. 189 of the edition of 1611. In the piratical edition of 1621, after Davison’s death, “small” is left out before “Pocks,” and Spilman’s name omitted at the foot of the verses. The printer’s error has had the singular effect of leading Dr Farmer, the writer on Shakespeare, to conclude that the word “pox” in the Elizabethan period meant smallpox even in imprecations such as “a pox on it.”
[905]Sir Tobie Matthews’Letters (1577-1655), London, 1660. (1) Donne to Mrs Cockaine, p. 342; (2) Donne to Sir R. D——, both without date.
[906]Court and Times of James I.
[907]Court and Times of Charles I.(Chamberlain to Carleton),I.28.
[908]Anthony Wood.
[909]For Chester also, in the parish register of Trinity Church (Harl. MS. 2177) there is a note opposite 1636: “for this two or three years divers children died of smallpox in Chester.”