Cambridge:PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS,AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
Footnotes:
[1]James Lind, M.D.,Two Papers on Fevers and Infection. Lond. 1763, p. 79.
[2]Observations on Fevers and Febrifuges.Made English from the French of M. Spon. London, 1682.
[3]James Hutchinson, M.D.,De Mutatione Febrium e tempore Sydenhami, etc.Edin. 1782. Thesis.
[4]Observationes Medicae, 3rd ed. 1676,I.2. § 23. English by R. G. Latham, M.D.
[5]Reports of Whitehaven Dispensary (Dixon) and of Nottingham General Hospital (Clarke), cited in the sequel.
[6]Rilliet,De la Fièvre Typhoïde chez les Enfants, Thèse, Paris,2 Janv. 1840, based on 61 cases; West,Diseases of Infancy and Childhood, 3rd ed. Lond. 1854.
[7]“Febris epidemicae cerebro et nervoso generi potissimum infestae, anno 1661 increbescentis descriptio,” inPathologia Cerebri, Cap.VIII, “De Spasmis universalibus qui in febribus malignis” etc., Eng. transl. p. 51.
[8]“Itaque ventrem inferiorem primo aperiens, viscera omnia in eo contenta satis sana et sarte tecta inveni”—the small intestine being telescoped in several places.
[9]Elsewhere he says the first case of the series was “circa solstitium hyemale anno 1655.”
[10]De Febribus, chapter “De febribus pestilentibus.”
[11]Treatise on the Infantile Remittent Fever.London, 1782.
[12]Pyretologia, 2 vols. Lond. 1692-94, i. 68, at the end of “Synopsis Febrium”:—“Febris verminosa, quae nulli e specibus memoratis praecisé determinari potest.”
[13]Häser gives a reference to an essay in which Willis’s fever of 1661 is compared to enteric fever: C. M. W. Rietschel,Epidemia anni 1661 a Willisio et febris nervosa lenta ab Huxhamio descriptae, etc. cum typho abdominali nostro tempore obvio comparantur. Lips. 1861. Not having found this essay, I cannot say on what grounds the comparison is made.
[14]Lives of the Norths.New ed. by Jessopp. 3 vols. 1890, iii. 8, 21.
[15]Diary of John Evelyn, Esq., F.R.S., 1641-1706, under the date of 18 Sept.
[16]Diary of Samuel Pepys, Esq., F.R.S., 1659-69.
[17]An analysis of the four Hippocratic constitutions, with modern illustrative cases, is given by Alfred Haviland,Climate, Weather, and Disease. London, 1855.
[18]Epist. I. Respons.§ 57. Greenhill’s ed. p. 298.
[19]Tillison to Sancroft, 14 Sept. 1665. Cited in former volume, p. 677: “One week full of spots and tokens, and perhaps the succeeding bill none at all.”
[20]H. Clutterbuck, M.D.,Obs. on the Epidemic Fevers prevailing in the Metropolis. Lond. 1819, pp. 58-60.
[21]Horace Walpole’sLettersgive two instances: he himself had never set foot in Southwark; a small tradesman in the City had never heard of Sir Robert Walpole.
[22]Transactions of the College of Physicians, iii. 366.
[23]Willis, Op. ed. 1682, Amstelod. p. 110. “De febribus pestilentibus”: “Etenim vulgo notum est febres interdum populariter regnare, quae pro symptomatum vehementia, summa aegrorum strage, et magna vi contagii, pestilentiae vix cedant; quae tamen, quia putridarum typos innotantur, nec adeo certo affectos interemunt aut alios inficiunt haudpestissed diminutiori appellationefebris pestilensnomen merentur. Praeter has dantur alterius generis febres, quarum et pernicies et contagium se remissius habent, quia tamen supra putridarum vires infestae sunt, et in se aliquatenus τὸ θεῖον Hippocratis continere videntur, tenuiori adhuc vocabulofebres malignaeappellantur.”
The war-typhus of 1643, which was sometimes bubonic, and was succeeded by plague in 1644, is given as an example offebris pestilens; the epidemic of 1661 as an example ofmaligna.
[24]Pyretologia, i. 68.
[25]C. L. Morley,De morbo epidemico, in 1678-9, narratio. Lond. 1680.
[26]Guido Fanois,De morbo epidemico hactenus inaudito, praeterita aestate anni 1669 Lugduni Batavorum vicinisque locis grassante. Lugd. Bat. 1671.
[27]Brownrigg cites the Leyden epidemic of 1669, which he calls an intermitting fever, as an instance of the effects of changes in the ground water; it was “powerfully aggravated by the mixture of salt water with the stagnant water of the canals and ditches. This fever happened in the month of August, 1669, and continued to the end of January, 1670.” “Observations on the Means of Preventing Epidemic Fevers.” Printed in theLiterary Life of W. Brownrigg, M.D., F.R.S.By Joshua Dixon, Whitehaven, 1801.
[28]Obs. Med.3rd ed., v. 2.
[29]Epist. I. Respons.§§ 56, 57.
[30]Pyretologie, i. 429.
[31]John LamportaliasLampard,A direct Method of ordering and curing People of that loathsome disease the Smallpox. Lond. 1685, p. 28.
[32]Hist. MSS. Com.v. 186. Duke of Sutherland’s historical papers.
[33]Schedula Monitoria I.“De novae febris ingressu.” §§ 2, 3.
[34]Ibid.§ 46.
[35]In the Belvoir Letters (Hist. MSS. Com. Calendar) Charles Bertie writes from London to the Countess of Rutland, 26 January, 1685, that “many are sick of pestilential fevers.” Evelyn says that the winter of 1685-6 was extraordinarily wet and mild, but does not mention sickness until June, 1686, when the weather was hot and the camp at Hounslow Heath was broken up owing to sickness.
[36]Evelyn’sDiary, which gives other particulars, including a description of the ice-carnival on the Thames.
[37]Thomas Short, M.D. of Sheffield,New Observations on City, Town and Country Bills of Mortality. London, 1750.
[38]Freind (Nine Commentaries upon Fever, &c., engl. by Dale, Lond. 1730, p. 4) has the following general criticism upon Sydenham’s varying constitutions of fevers: “I believe also I may truly affirm that those very fevers which Sydenham explains as distinct species, according to the various temperature of the seasons, do not differ much from one another. For, if perhaps you should except thePetechiae, they differ rather in degree than in kind. There hardly ever appeared a fever in any season where the signs so constantly answered one another, that those which you found collected in one person should unite after the same manner in another; however upon this account you would not deny their labouring under the same distemper.”
[39]Tractatus de Podagra, § 35. Greenhill’s edition, p. 428.
[40]Chronicle of Perth(Maitland Club) under date 14 Oct. 1621.
[41]Thorold Rogers,Hist. of Agric. and Prices, sub anno.
[42]Extracts from Kirk Session Records.Spalding Club, 1846.
[43]Chronicle of Perth.
[44]History of the Burgh of Dumfries.By W. MacDowall. 2nd ed. Edin. 1873, p. 381.
[45]Court and Times of James I., ii. 331.
[46]Ibid., under date 25 Oct. 1423.
[47]Ibid., ii. 439.
[48]Cal. Coke MSS.(Hist. MSS. Com.) i. 158.
[49]C. and T. James I., ii. 469.
[50]Mayerne,Opera Medica, Lond. 1700.
[51]Ibid., ii. 473.
[52]Janus Chunradus Rhumelius,Historia morbi, qui etc.Norimb. 1625.
[53]W. D. Cooper,Archæologia,XXXVII.(1857) p. 1. I had overlooked this important paper on English plagues in my former volume. The chief additional facts that it contains are the very severe plague at Cambridge in the summer of 1666, the deaths of 417 by plague at Peterborough in 1666, and of 8 more in the first quarter of 1667, and the slightness of the Nottingham outbreak, which was in August, 1666 (p. 22).
[54]London Gazette, 17-21 June, 1675, repeated in the number for 28 June-1 July.
[55]Brand,Hist. of Newcastle,II.509. Report contradicted on 18 Dec.
[56]“The habitations of the poor within or adjoining to the City,” says Willan, “have suffered greatly; and some, I am informed, have been almost depopulated, the infection having extended to every inmate. The rumour of a plague was totally devoid of foundation.”
[57]Rudder,A New History of Gloucestershire, 1779, P. 737.
[58]Spelman,De Sepultura. English ed. 1641, p. 28. He cites the burial fees paid to the parson as twice as much for coffined as for uncoffined corpses. This agrees on the whole with the evidence adduced in the former volume of this history, p. 335.
[59]18 and 19 Car. II. cap. 4; 30 Car. II. (1), cap. 3. These Acts were repealed by 54 Geo. III., cap. 108.
[60]History of England,I.359.
[61]He has one or two relevant remarks: “But while we suppose common worms in graves, ’tis not easy to find any there; few in churchyards above a foot deep, fewer or none in churches, though in fresh-decayed bodies. Teeth, bones, and hair give the most lasting defiance to corruption. In an hydropsical body, ten years buried in the churchyard, we met with a fat concretion [adipocere] where the nitre of the earth and the salt and lixivious liquor of the body had coagulated large lumps of fat into the consistence of the hardest Castille soap, whereof part remaineth with us. The body of the Marquis of Dorset seemed sound and handsomely cereclothed, that after seventy-eight years was found uncorrupted. Common tombs preserve not beyond powder: a firmer consistence and compage of parts might be expected from arefaction, deep burial, or charcoal.”
[62]One may allege poverty on general grounds, as well as on particular. Thus, in 1636, the mayor was unpopular: “He was a stout man and had not the love of the commons. He was cruel, and not pitying the poor, he caused many dunghills to be carried away; but the cost was on the poor—it being so hard times might well have been spared.” Ormerod,I.203.
[63]Printed plague-bill, with MS. additions, Harl. MS. 1929.
[64]Haygarth,Phil. Trans.,LXVIII.139.
[65]Cotton Mather’sMagnalia. Ed. of 1853,I.227.
[66]History of England &c.,IV.707. Evelyn (Diary, 21 May, 1696) says the city was “very healthy,” although the summer was exceeding rainy, cold and unseasonable.
[67]Thomas Dover, M.B.,The Ancient Physician’s Legacy. London, 1732, p. 98.
[68]Broadsheet in the British Museum Library.
[69]Tooke,Hist. of Prices, Introd.
[70]Scotia Illustrata.Edin. 1684. Lib.II.p. 52.
[71]Fynes Morryson,Itinerary, 1614. Pt.III.p. 156.
[72]Edinburgh, 1691, p. 67.
[73]The Epilogue to the Five Papers, etc.Edin. 1699, p. 22. This title refers to a controversy on the use of antimonial emetics in fevers. See Dr John Brown’s essay on Dr Andrew Brown, in hisLocke and Sydenham, new ed. Edinb., 1866.
[74]He adds that “the fever has several times before been in my family and among my servants and children.” In mentioning the case of the Master of Forbes in August, 1691, whom he cured, he remarks that “the malicious said he was under no fever”; to disprove which Dr Brown refers to the symptoms of frequent pulse, watching and raving, continual vomiting, frequent fainting, and extreme weakness.
[75]Andrew Fletcher,Two Discourses. 1699.
[76]The English Government took off the Customs duty upon victual imported from England to Scotland, and placed a bounty of 20d.per boll upon it.
[77]Patrick Walker,Some Remarkable Passages in the Life and Death of Mr Daniel Cargill, &c.Edinb. 1732. (Reprinted inBiographia Presbyteriana. Edinb. 1827,II.25.)
[78]Sir John Sinclair’sStatistical Account of Scotland. 1st ed.III.62.
[79]Ibid.II.544.
[80]Ibid.VI.122.
[81]In the remote parish of Kilmuir, Skye, the famine is referred to the year 1688, “when the poor actually perished on the highways for want of aliment.” (Ibid.II.551.) In Duthil and Rothimurchus, Invernessshire, the famine is referred to 1680, “as nearly as can be recollected:” “A famine in this and the neighbouring counties, of the most fatal consequence. The poorer sort of people frequented the churchyard to pull a mess of nettles, and frequently struggled about the prey, being the earliest spring greens.... So many families perished from want that for six miles in a well-inhabited extent, within the year there was not a smoke remaining.” (Ibid.IV.316.) In the Kirk session records of the parish of Kiltearn, Rossshire, which I have seen in MS., there are various entries in the year 1697 relating to badges of lead to be worn by those licensed to beg from door to door: on 12 April, 34 such persons are named, and on 19 April, Robert Douglas was reimbursed for the cost of 35 badges. On 2 Aug., the number of poor who were to receive each from the heritors ten shillings Scots reads like “nighentie foure.”
[82]John Freind, M.D.,Nine Commentaries on Fevers, transl. by T. Dale. London, 1730.
[83]Cal. Coke MSS.II.405.
[84]Joannes Turner,De Febre Britannica Anni 1712.Lond. 1713, p. 3. “Vere proximè elapso, per Gallias passim ingravescere coeperunt febres mali moris in nobiles domos, et regiam praecipue infestae; quò Ludovicum Magnum ipsa infortunia ostenderent Majorem, et patientia Christianissima Maximum.”
[85]From London, on 25 February, 1701, we hear of the illness from a violent fever of Mr Brotherton, at his house in Chancery Lane; he was member for Newton, and Mr Coke was advised to look after his seat. A letter of 18 April, 1701, from Chilcote, in Derbyshire, says that it has been a sickly time in these parts and that a certain lady and her daughter were both dead and to be buried the same day. In the same correspondence, cases of fever in London are mentioned on 18 June and 4 December the same year (1701).Cal. Coke MSS.II.421, 424, 429, 441.
[86]Tractatus Duplex.Lond. 1710. Engl. transl. 1737, p. 253.
[87]W. Butter, M.D.,A Treatise on the Infantile Remittent Fever. Lond. 1782.
[88]Philip Guide, M.D.,A Kind Warning to a Multitude of Patients daily afflicted with different sorts of Fevers. Lond. 1710.
[89]One death from “malignant fever,” two from scarlet fever.
[90]Hunter’sHallamshire, ed. Gatty.
[91]Brand,Hist. of Newcastle,II.308. Swift writes to Stella on 8 December, 1710: “We are terribly afraid of the plague; they say it is at Newcastle. I begged Mr Harley [the Lord President] for the love of God to take some care about it, or we are all ruined. There have been orders for all ships from the Baltic to pass their quarantine before they land; but they neglect it. You remember I have been afraid these two years.” The orders referred to were probably the Order of Council of 9 Nov. 1710. Parliament met on the 25th Nov. and passed the first Quarantine Act (9 Anne, cap.II.). Swift had a good deal to say with Ministers on many subjects, and it is not impossible, however absurd, that his had been the first suggestion to Harley of a quarantine law. I had purposed including a history of quarantine in Britain, but can find no convenient context for it. I shall therefore refer the reader to the historical sketch which I have appended to the Article “Quarantine” in theEncyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed.
[92]Essay on Epidemic Diseases.Dublin, 1734, p. 34.
[93]Dr Guide, a Frenchman, who had been in practice in London for many years, says in hisKind Warning to a Multitude of Patients daily afflicted with different sorts of Fevers(1710) “the British physicians and surgeons are lately fallen into an unhappy and terrible confusion and mixture of honest and fraudulent pretenders.” Another writer of 1710, Dr Lynn, quoted in the chapter on Smallpox, implies that physicians were taking an unusually cynical view of their business. The most interesting essay of the time on fevers is by J. White, M.D. (De recta Sanguinis Missione &c.Lond. 1712), a Scot who had been in the Navy and afterwards in practice at Lisbon; but it throws no light upon the London fevers.
[94]Elizabeth, Lady Otway, to Benj. Browne, Dec. 1st and 15th, 1715, and Feb. 16, 1716.Hist. MSS. Com.X.pt. 4, p. 352; Hemingway’sHist. of Chester,II.244.
[95]Letters, ed. Cunningham,I.72.
[96]Lecky,History of England in the Eighteenth Century,VI.204:—“All the evidence we possess concurs in showing that during the first three-quarters of the century the position of the poorer agricultural classes in England was singularly favourable. The price of wheat was both low and steady. Wages, if they advanced slowly, appear to have commanded an increased proportion of the necessaries of life, and there were all the signs of growing material well-being. It was noticed that wheat bread, and that made of the finest flour, which at the beginning of the period had been confined to the upper and middle classes, had become before the close of it over the greater part of England the universal food, and that the consumption of cheese and butter in proportion to the population in many districts almost trebled. Beef and mutton were eaten almost daily in villages.”
[97]Six Centuries of Work and Wages, pp. 398-415.
[98]Gentleman’s Magazine, 1766.
[99]Short.
[100]Clifton Wintringham, M.D.,Commentarium nosologicum, morbos epidemicos et aeris variationes in urbe Eboracensi locisque vicinis ab anno 1715 usque ad finem anni 1725 grassantes, complectens. Londini, 1727.
[101]W. White, M.D.,Phil. Trans.LXXII.(1782), p. 35. The annual deaths under the oldrégimeexceeded by a good deal the annual births: in the seven years 1728-35, according to the figures from the parish registers in Drake’sEboracum, the burials from all causes were 3488, and the baptisms 2803, an annual excess of 98 deaths over the births in an estimated population of 10,800 (birth-rate 37 per 1000, death-rate 46 per 1000). But in the seven years, 1770-76, the balance was the other way: the population had increased by two thousand (to 12,800), and the births were on an average 20 in the year more than the deaths (474 births, 454 deaths), the birth-rate being still 37 per 1000, and the death-rate fallen to 35 per 1000. But the correctness of these rates depends on the population being exactly given.
[102]“There has been very great mobbing by the weavers of this town, as they pretend, because they are starved for want of trade; and they pull the calico cloaths off women’s backs wherever they see them. The Trainbands have been up since last Friday, and they were forced to fire at the mobb in Moor Fields before they would disperse, and four or five were shott and as many wounded.” (Benjamin Browne to his father, 16 June, 1719: Mr Browne’s MSS.Hist. MSS. Com.X.pt. 4, p. 351.) The calicoes which the London weavers tore from the backs of women were doubtless the Indian fabrics brought home by the ships of the East India Company. These imports were so injurious to home manufactures that an Act had been passed in 1700 prohibiting (with some exceptions) the use in England of printed or dyed calicoes or any other printed or dyed cotton goods. This prohibition was re-enacted in 1721, two years after the rioting at Moorfields. (7 Geo. I. cap. 7). Blomefield (Hist. of Norfolk,III.437) says that at Norwich also there was tearing of calicoes, “as pernicious to the trade” of that city. On the 20th of September, 1720, a great riot arose there, the rabble cutting several gowns in pieces on women’s backs, entering shops to seize all calicoes found there, beating the constables, and opposing the sheriff’s power to such a degree that the company of artillery had to be called out.
[103]Ambrose Warren to Sir P. Gell, 16 Sept. 1718,Hist. MSS. Com.IX.pt. 2, p. 400b.
[104]The sudden rise was due to influenza; but the fever mortality was high for weeks before and after.
[105]John Arbuthnot, M.D.,Essay concerning the Effects of Air on Human Bodies. Lond. 1733, p. 187.
[106]Edward Strother, M.D.,Practical Observations on the Epidemical Fever which hath reigned so violently these two years past and still rages at the present time, with some incidental remarks shewing wherein this fatal Distemper differs from Common fevers; and more particularly why the Bark has so often failed: and methods prescribed to render its use more effectual. In which is contained a very remarkable History of a Spotted Fever.London, 1729. This book was written before the influenza of the end of 1729. At p. 126 the author was writing on the 24th of May, 1728. The preface is undated.
[107]Bernard de Mandeville, M.D.,A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysteric Diseases, 3rd ed. 1730, 1st ed. 1711. It contains nothing about the “little fever.”
[108]Richard Blackmore, M.D.,A Discourse upon the Plague, with a prefatory account of Malignant Fever. London, 1721, p. 17.
[109]W. Cockburn, M.D.,Danger of improving Physick, with a brief account of the present Epidemick Fever. London, 1730.
[110]I am the more persuaded of the identity with relapsing fever of much that was called remittent in Britain, and even intermittent, after reading the highly original treatise by R. T. Lyons onRelapsing or Famine Fever, London, 1872, relating to the epidemics of it in India.
[111]Huxham,On Fevers, chap.VIII.
[112]Murchison,Continued Fevers of Great Britain, 2nd ed. Lond. 1873, p. 423.
[113]Sir Richard Manningham, Kt., M.D.Febricula or Little Fever, commonly called the Nervous or Hysteric Fever, the Fever on the Spirits, Vapours, Hypo, or Spleen. 1746.
[114]It is clear that the nervous fever established itself as a distinct type in England in the earlier part of the 18th century, both in medical opinion and in common acceptation: thus Horace Walpole, writing from Arlington Street on 28 January, 1760, says: “I have had a nervous fever these six or seven weeks every night, and have taken bark enough to have made a rind for Daphne: nay, have even stayed at home two days.”Letters of Horace Walpole, ed. Cunningham, iii. 281.
[115]Commentar. Nosol.u. s.
[116]William Hillary, M.D., “An Account of the principal variations of the Weather and the concomitant Epidemical Diseases from 1726 to 1734 at Ripon.” App. toEssay on the Smallpox, Lond. 1740.
[117]Brand,History of Newcastle, ii. 517, says that the magistrates of that town made a collection for the relief of poor housekeepers in the remarkably severe winter of 1728-29, the sum raised being £362. 18s.
[118]Tooke,History of Prices from 1793 to 1837. Introd. chap. p. 40.
[119]Ancient Physician’s Legacy.Lond. 1733, p. 144.
[120]“In the year 1727,” says Hillary, “I ordered several persons to lose 120 to 140 ounces of blood at several times in these inflammatory distempers, with great relief and success; whereas, in this winter [1728] I met with few, and even the strong and robust, who could bear the loss of above 40 or 50 ounces of blood, at three or four times; but, in general, most of the sick could not bear bleeding oftener than twice, and then not to exceed 30 or 34 oz. at most, at two or three times; and especially those who had been afflicted with, and debilitated by, the intermitting fever in the autumn before,—these could not bear blooding oftener than once, or twice at most, and in very small quantities too, though the acuteness of the pain, and the other symptoms in all, seemed at first to indicate much larger evacuations that way; but the first bleeding often sunk the pulse and strength of the patient so much that I durst not repeat it more than once, and in some not at all.” Hillary, u. s. p. 26.
[121]Edin. Med. Essays and Obs.I-VI.This annual publication was the original of theTransactionsof the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
[122]Ibid.I.40;II.27;II.287 (St Clair’s case);IV.
[123]Huxham,De aere et morbis.
[124]Ebenezer Gilchrist, M.D., “Essay on Nervous Fevers.”Edin. Med. Essays and Obs.IV.347, andVI.(orV.pt. 2), p. 505.
[125]Ibid.V.pt. 1, p. 30.
[126]Obs. de aere et morbis; also his essayOn Fevers.
[127]Hillary, App. toSmallpox, 1740, pp. 57, 66.
[128]Mr Lecky (History of England in the 18th Century),II., says that the famine and fever of 1740-41, which he describes as an important event in the history of Ireland, “hardly excited any attention in England.” It was severely felt, however, in England; and if it excited hardly any attention, that must have been because there were so many superior interests which were more engrossing than the state of the poor.
[129]Gent. Magaz.X. (1740), 32, 35. Blomefield, for Norwich, says that many there would have perished in the winter of 1739-40 but for help from their richer neighbours.
[130]W. Allen,Landholder’s Companion, 1734. Cited by Tooke.
[131]An Inquiry into the Nature, Cause and Cure of the present Epidemic Fever ... with the difference betwixt Nervous and Inflammatory Fevers, and the Method of treating each, 1742, p. 54.
[132]John Altree,Gent. Magaz.Dec. 1741, p. 655.
[133]White,ibid.1742, p. 43.
[134]Dunsford,Historical Memorials of Tiverton. The accounts of the great weaving towns of the South-west are not unpleasing until we come to the time when they were overtaken by decay of work and distress, from about 1720 onwards. The district, says Defoe, was “a rich enclosed country, full of rivers and towns, and infinitely populous, in so much that some of the market towns are equal to cities in bigness, and superior to many of them in numbers of people.” Taunton had 1100 looms. Tiverton in the seven years 1700-1706 had 331 marriages, 1116 baptisms, 1175 burials (a slight excess), and an estimated population of 8693, which kept nearly at that level for about twenty years longer (from 1720 to 1726 the marriages were 284, the baptisms 1070 and the burials 1175).
[135]Gent. Magaz.XI.(1742), p. 704.
[136]Blomefield,History of NorfolkIII.449.
[137]Arnot,History of Edinburgh, 1779, p. 211.
[138]Gent. Magaz.1741, p. 705.
[139]Edin. Med. Essays and Obs.I.Art. 1.
[140]Gent. Magaz.1742, p. 186.
[141]John Wall, M.D.,Medical Tracts, Oxford, 1780, p. 337. See alsoObs. on the Epid. Fever of 1741, 3rd ed., by Daniel Cox, apothecary, with cases.
[142]Edin. Med. Essays and Obs.VI.539.
[143]“And here I cannot but observe how many ignorant conceited coxcombs ride out, under a shew of business, with their lancet in their pocket, and make diseases instead of curing them, drawing their weapon upon every occasion, right or wrong, and upon every complaint cry out, ‘Egad! I must have some of your blood,’ give the poor wretches a disease they never might have had, drawing the blood and the purse, torment them in this world,” etc.—An Essay on the present Epidemic Fever, Sherborne, 1741. The practice of blood-letting in continued fevers received a check in the second half of the 18th century, but it was still kept up in inflammatory diseases or injuries. Even in the latter it was freely satirized by the laity. When the surgeon inTom Jonescomplained bitterly that the wounded hero would not be blooded though he was in a fever, the landlady of the inn answered: “It is an eating fever, then, for he hath devoured two swingeing buttered toasts this morning for breakfast.” “Very likely,” says the doctor, “I have known people eat in a fever; and it is very easily accounted for; because the acidity occasioned by the febrile matter may stimulate the nerves of the diaphragm, and thereby occasion a craving which will not be easily distinguishable from a natural appetite.... Indeed I think the gentleman in a very dangerous way, and, if he is not blooded, I am afraid will die.”
[144]Munk,Roll of the College of Physicians,II.53.
[145]Gentleman’s Magaz.III.1733, Sept., p. 492.
[146]Effects of Air on Human Bodies, 1733, pp. 11, 17. His excellent remarks on the need of fresh air in the treatment of fevers, two generations before Lettsom carried out the practice, are at p. 54. The curious calculation above cited was copied by Langrish, and usually passes as his.
[147]“Also without the bars both sides of the street be pestered with cottages and alleys even up to Whitechapel Church, and almost half a mile beyond it, into the common field: all which ought to be open and free for all men. But this common field, I say, being sometime the beauty of this city on that part, is so encroached upon by building of filthy cottages, and with other purprestures, enclosures and laystalls (notwithstanding all proclamations and Acts of Parliament made to the contrary) that in some places it scarce remaineth a sufficient highway for the meeting of carriages and droves of cattle. Much less is there any fair, pleasant or wholesome way for people to walk on foot, which is no small blemish to so famous a city to have so unsavoury and unseemly an entrance or passage thereunto.” Stow’sSurvey of London, section on “Suburbs without the Walls.”
[148]The line of an old field walk can still be followed from Aldermanbury Postern to Hackney, Goldsmiths’ Row being one of the wider sections of it.
[149]Luttrell’sDiary10 June, 1684.
[150]Roger North’s “Autobiography,” inLives of the Norths, new ed. 3 vols., 1890,III.54.
[151]Willan, 1801: “The passage filled with putrid excremental or other abominable effluvia from a vault at the bottom of the staircase.” See also Clutterbuck,Epid. Fever at present prevailing. Lond. 1819, p. 60. Ferriar, of Manchester, writing of the class of houses most apt to harbour the contagion of typhus, says, “Of the new buildings I have found those most apt to nurse it which are added in a slight manner to the back part of a row, and exposed to the effluvia of the privies.”
[152]C. Davenant to T. Coke, London, 14 Dec. 1700.Cal. Coke MSS.,II.411, “I heartily commiserate your sad condition to be in the country these bad weeks; but I fancy you will find Derbyshire more pleasant even in winter than the House of Commons will be in a summer season. For, though it be now sixteen years ago [1685], I still bear in memory the evil smells descending from the small apartments adjoining to the Speaker’s Chamber, which came down into the House with irresistible force when the weather is hot.”
[153]Report on the Diseases in London, 1796-1800.Lond. 1801.
[154]John Ferriar, M.D.,Medical Histories and Reflections. London 1810,II.217.
[155]Heysham,Jail Fever at Carlisle in 1781. Lond. 1782, p. 33.
[156]John Howard,State of the Prisons.
[157]Notes and Queries, 4th ser.XII.346. Jenkinson, who was a Minister under George II., was reputed to have set an example of stopping up windows in his mansion near Croydon:
You e’en shut out the light of dayTo save a paltry shilling.
Others had boards painted to look like brickwork, which could be used to cover up windows at pleasure.
[158]Petition, undated, but placed in a collection in the British Museum among broadsides of the years 1696-1700. In 1725 the imprisoned debtors at Liverpool petitioned Parliament for relief, alleging that they were reduced to a starving condition, having only straw and water at the courtesy of the serjeant.Commons’ Journals,XX.375.
[159]Commons’ Journals, 20 March, 1728/29, 14 May, 1729, 24 March, 1729/30.
“Mrs Mary Trapps was prisoner in the Marshalsea and was put to lie in the same bed with two other women, each of which paid 2s.6d.per week chamber rent; she fell ill and languished for a considerable time; and the last three weeks grew so offensive that the others were hardly able to bear the room; they frequently complained to the turnkeys and officers, and desired to be removed; but all in vain. At last she smelt so strong that the turnkey himself could not bear to come into the room to hear the complaints of her bedfellows; and they were forced to lie with her on the boards, till she died.”
[160]Political State of Great Britain,XXXIX.April, 1730, pp. 430-431, 448.
[161]Gent. Magaz.,XX.235. This authority is twenty years after the event, the incident having been recalled in 1750, on the occasion of the Old Bailey catastrophe.
[162]Huxham.
[163]See the former volume of this History, pp. 375-386.
[164]A Report &c. and of other Crown Cases.By Sir Michael Foster, Knt., some time one of the Judges of the Court of King’s Bench. 2nd ed. London, 1776, p. 74.
[165]TheGentleman’s Magazinehowever says (1750, p. 235): “There being a very cold and piercing east wind to attack the sweating persons when they came out of court.”
[166]See Bancroft,Essay on the Yellow Fever, with observations concerning febrile contagion etc.Lond. 1811.
[167]Gent. Magaz.1750, p. 274: “Many families are retired into the country, and near 12,000 houses empty”—an impossible number.
[168]Sir John Pringle,Observations on the Nature and Cure of the Hospital and Jayl Fever. Letter to Mead, May 24. London, 1750.
[169]One of the cases was that of an apprentice: “Some of the journeymen working in Newgate had forced him to go down into the great trunk of the ventilator in order to bring up a wig which one of them had thrown into it. As the machine was then working, he had been almost suffocated with the stench before they could get him up.” Pringle, “Ventilation of Newgate,”Phil. Trans.1753, p. 42.
[170]Thomas Stibbs to Sir John Pringle, Jan. 25, 1753.Ibid.p. 54.
[171]“Ventilators some years since when first introduced, it was thought, would prove an effectual remedy for and preservative against this infection in jails; great expectations were formed of their benefit, but several years’ experience must now have fully shewn that ventilators will not remove infection from a jail.” Lind,Means of Preserving the Health of Seamen in the Royal Navy. New ed. Lond. 1774, p. 29.
[172]J. C. Lettsom, M.D.,Medical Memoirs of the General Dispensary in London, 1773-4. Lond. 1774.
[173]Gent. Magaz.1776, April 22. p. 187.
[174]Lind,Two Papers on Fevers and Infection. Lond. 1763. pp. 90, 106. Many cases had buboes both in the groins and the armpits.
[175]Carmichael Smyth,Description of the Jail Distemper among Spanish Prisoners at Winchesterin 1780. Lond. 1795.
[176]Cal. Coke MSS.Hist. MSS. Commiss. i. 218.
[177]Med. Hist. and Reflect.ut infra.
[178]The following case, which happened five or six years ago, shows disparity of conditions in a twofold aspect. A lady from a city in the north of Scotland travelled direct to Switzerland to reside for a few weeks at one of the hotels in the High Alps. Within an hour or two of the end of her journey she began to feel ill, and was confined to her room from the time she entered the hotel. An English physician diagnosed the effects of the sun; the German doctor of the place, from his reading only, diagnosed typhus fever, which proved to be right, the patient dying with the most pronounced signs of malignant typhus. An explanation of the mystery was soon forthcoming. The lady had been a district visitor in an old and poor part of the Scotch city; she had, in particular, visited in a certain tenement-house in a court, from which half-a-dozen persons had been admitted to the Infirmary with typhus (an unusual event) at the very time when she was ill of it on the Swiss mountain.
[179]Blane,Select Dissertations. London, 1822, p. 1.
[180]Mather’sMagnalia. 2 vols. Hartford, 1853, i. 226 “Life of Sir William Phipps.” “Whereof there died, ere they could reach Boston, as I was told by Sir Francis Wheeler himself [‘but a few months ago’], no less than 1300 sailors out of 21, and no less than 1800 soldiers out of 24.” He had brought 1800 troops with him from England to Barbados in transports.
[181]Churchill’s Collection,VI.173.
[182]W. Cockburn, M.D.An Account of the Nature, Causes, Symptoms and Cure of the Distempers that are incident to Seafaring People.3 Parts. London, 1696-97.
[183]J. White, M.D.De recta Sanguinis Missione, or, New and Exact Observations of Fevers, in which Letting of Blood is shew’d to be the true and solid Basis of their Cure, &c.London, 1712. His chief point, that the strongest and lustiest were most obnoxious to malignant fevers, had been urged by Cockburn in 1696.
[184]Lind (Two Papers on Fevers and Infection, London, 1763, p. 113) gives an instance where the poisonous effluvia of the ship’s well did not spread through the ’tween decks: “The following accident happened lately [written in 1761] in the Bay of Biscay. In a ship of 60 guns, by the carpenter’s neglecting to turn the cock that freshens the bilge-water, which had not been pumped out for some time, a large scum, as is usual, or a thick tough film was collected a-top of it. The first man who went down to break this scum in order to pump out the bilge-water was immediately suffocated. The second suffered an instantaneous death in like manner. And three others, who successively attempted the same business, narrowly escaped with life: one of whom has never since perfectly recovered his health. Yet that ship was at all times, both before and after this accident, remarkably healthy.” It was the contention of Renwick, a naval surgeon who wrote in 1794, that it was the stirring of the bilge-water in being discharged from the ship’s well, or the adding of fresh water to the foul, that caused the offensive emanations. “Hence the first cause of febrile sickness in all ships recently commissioned.” Renwick made so much of the foul bilge-water as a cause that he thought the fevers ought to be termed “bilge-fevers.”Letter to the Critical Reviewer, p. 42.
[185]These particulars are not given in Freind’s special work on Peterborough’s campaign, which deals only with the military and political history, but in hisNine Commentaries on Fever(Engl. ed. by Dale, London, 1730), and in a Latin letter to Cockburn, dated Barcelona, 9 Sept. 1706, which was first printed inSeveral Cases in Physic. By Pierce Dod, M.D. London, 1746.
[186]Smollett joined the ‘Cumberland’ as surgeon’s mate in 1740, before she sailed with the fleet sent out under Vernon and others to Carthagena. His account inRoderick Randomof the sick-bay of the ‘Thunder’ as she lay at the Nore is doubtless veracious: “When I observed the situation of the patients, I was much less surprised that people should die on board, than that any sick person should recover. Here I saw about fifty miserable distempered wretches, suspended in rows, so huddled one upon another that not more than fourteen inches space was allowed for each with his bed and bedding; and deprived of the light of the day, as well as of fresh air; breathing nothing but a noisome atmosphere of the morbid steams exhaling from their own excrements and diseased bodies, devoured with vermin hatched in the filth that surrounded them, and destitute of every convenience necessary for people in that helpless condition.” Chap.XXV.He wrote a separate account of the fatal Carthagena expedition in a compendium of voyages.
[187]Coxe’sLife of Marlborough. Bohn’s ed.I.183.
[188]Grainger’s essay,Historia febris anomalae Bataviae annorum, 1746, 1747, 1748, etc.Edin. 1753, is chiefly occupied with an anomalous “intermittent” or “remittent” fever with miliary eruption, and with dysentery.
[189]For a full discussion of the relation of dysentery to typhus, see Virchow, “Kriegstypus und Ruhr.”Virchow’s Archiv, Bd.LII.(1871), p. 1.
[190]Sir John Pringle,Obs. on the Nature and Cure of Hospital and Jayl Fever, Lond. 1750 (Letter to Mead); and hisObs. on Diseases of the Army, Lond. 1752 (fullest account).
[191]Pringle,Diseases of the Army, pp. 40-45.
[192]Ibid.p. 68.
[193]Donald Monro, M.D.Diseases of British Military Hospitals in Germany, from Jan. 1761 to the Return of the Troops to England in 1763.Lond. 1764. The same campaign called forth also Dr Richard Brocklesby’sŒconomical and Medical Observations from 1758 to 1763 on Military Hospitals and Camp Diseases etc.London, 1764.
[194]Essay on Preserving the Health of Seamen, Lond. 1757;Two papers etc.u. s.
[195]In 1755 a pestilential sickness raged in the North American fleet, the ‘Torbay’ and ‘Munich’ being obliged to land their sick at Halifax.
[196]TheGentleman’s Magazinefor December, 1772 (p. 589), records the following: “The bodies of two Dutchmen who were thrown overboard from a Dutch East Indiaman, where a malignant fever raged, were cast up near the Sally Port at Portsmouth; they were so offensive that it was with difficulty that anyone could be got to bury them.”
[197]W. Brownrigg, M.D.Considerations on preventing Pestilential Contagion.London, 1771, p. 36.
[198]Lind writes in his book on the Health of Seamen, “The sources of infection to our armies and fleets are undoubtedly the jails: we can often trace the importers of it directly from them. It often proves fatal in impressing men on the hasty equipment of a fleet. The first English fleet sent last war to America lost by it alone two thousand men.”
[199]R. Robertson, M.D.Observations on Jail, Hospital or Ship Fever from the 4th April, 1776, to the 30th April, 1789, made in various parts of Europe and America and on the Intermediate Seas.London, 1789. New edition.
[200]Given by Blane in a Postscript to his paper “On the Comparative Health of the British Navy, 1779-1814” inSelect Dissertations, London, 1822, p. 62.
[201]Blane, u. s. p. 47, from information supplied by Dr John Lind, of Haslar Hospital.
[202]Diseases incident to Seamen, p. 18.
[203]Ibid.p. 34.
[204]Trotter,Medicina Nautica,I.61. His general abstracts of the health of the fleet in the first years of the French War, 1794-96, give many instances of ship-typhus.
[205]John Clark, M.D.Observations on the Diseases which prevail in Long Voyages to Hot Countries, &c.London, 1773. 2nd ed. 2 vols., 1792.
John Lorimer, M.D., published inMed. Facts and Observations,VI.211, a “Return of the ships’ companies and military on board the ships of the H. E. I. C. for the years 1792 and 1793.”
[206]Reflections and Resolutions for the Gentlemen of Ireland, p. 28. Cited by Lecky.
[207]Sutton, “Changing Air in Ships,”Phil. Trans.XLII.42; W. Watson, M.D.ibid.p. 62; H. Ellis,ibid.XLVII.211.
[208]Ibid.XLIX.332, “Ventilation of a Transport.”
[209]Ibid.pp. 333, 339.
[210]Lind,Essay on the Most Effectual Means of Preserving the Health of Seamen in the Royal Navy. New Ed. London, 1774, p. 29.