[580]Beaufort MSS.Histor. MSS. Com.XII.App. 9, p. 85.
[581]Evelyn’sDiary, 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’sLife 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’sHistorical 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 hisDiary(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’sMemoirs.
[608]La Grippemay, 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’sWorks. 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 toEssay 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. ThePolitical State of Great Britainfor 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 hisPutrid 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’sLetters, 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 hisStudies 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 theGentleman’s Magazine, will show how slight the rise was:
[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 ofThe 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 theInfluenza, 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’sMed. Commentaries, Decade 2, vol. iv. p. 363.
[685]Falconer, “Influenzae Descriptio, uti nuper comparebat in urbe Bathoniae, mensibus Julio, Augusto et SeptembriA.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 beenveryprevalent,” 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 theMed. and Phys. Journalfrom 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’sAnnals 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 oftertianwere 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 theLond. 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 theLancet, 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 theGentleman’s Magazinefor 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, inRep. Reg.-Gen.
[742]Farr, in theReport 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’sLetters 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 ancientinfluenzavery 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 hisClinical 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, andFurther 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’sDecem Scriptores, col. 579.
[753]Boyle’sWorks, 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, inNoah 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 onMorbid 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 onThe 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 Americanphilosophe. 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 1606B.C.toA.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 theMedical 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, inBlackwood’s Magazine, March, 1889, pp. 395-6. A letter in thePall 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]SeeThe 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 theLife 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 theGentleman’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.