A History of Epidemics in Britain, Volume 2 (of 2): From the Extinction of Plague to the Present TimeCreighton, Charles
History
A History of Epidemics in Britain, Volume 2 (of 2): From the Extinction of Plague to the Present Time
Creighton, Charles
Epidemics -- Great Britain -- History
He then gives the case of a lieutenant on board the ‘Barfleur.’ At
first he was restless and delirious; on the 7th and 8th days he had
_subsultus tendinum_; on the 8th day his tongue was sometimes fixed,
and his eyes sparkled; on the 9th day, he was wholly deprived of his
understanding; he pulled off the fringe of the bed and plucked the
flocks; when he had before faultered in his speech, he was sometimes
seized with hiccough. But on the 10th day, after 12 oz. of blood had
been drawn from the jugular vein, his delirium went off on a sudden,
and he began to mend, making a perfect recovery.
Until the middle of the 18th century there are few other notices of
ship-fever, but it is probable that Huxham’s accounts of a very malignant
typhus among the crews of ships of war at Plymouth in 1735 (as well as at
Portsmouth according to report), and again in 1741, are to be taken as
samples of what might have been recorded on many occasions[186].
Fever and Dysentery of Campaigns: War Typhus, 1742-63.
The war in Ireland after the accession of William III. produced two
remarkable instances of war-sickness, which are fully given in another
chapter. The campaigns of Marlborough against the armies of Louis XIV.,
from 1704 to the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, appear to have found no
historian from the medical side, nor does the duke refer to these matters
in his dispatches or letters, beyond a remark in a letter to his wife from
near Munich, 30 July, 1704, a fortnight before the battle of Blenheim:
“There having been no war in this country for above sixty years, these
towns and villages are so clean that you would be pleased with them[187].”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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