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
The appearances after death were remarkable (many bodies were opened):
“In some a part of the villous coat of the stomach and of the small
guts was inflamed; and the rest of these organs were filled with an
eruption of the miliary crystalline kind, except that it was larger;
and there was likewise an obstruction in the glands of the mesentery.
In others a strong inflammation had seized the whole stomach and a
small portion of the oesophagus, but the intestines were free.... In
those cases where the delirium had continued long and violent, we
found either ulceration on the stomach, or its villous coat separated,
together with a great inflammation, and even some gangrenous spots, on
the other coats of that organ.” Some recovered by critical abscesses.
Others who escaped death by the poison carried its terrible effects
for many months; their limbs and joints were feeble, and they were
troubled with vertigo, lassitude and fears[213].
Exactly covering the period of these fevers at Rouen, there were low
putrid fevers in London, in Worcestershire, in Ireland, and among the
English colonists in Barbados. It was certainly not a mere fashion in
medicine which produced the accounts of a similar fever, for these
accounts came from places far apart and were independent of each other. Dr
Fothergill, of Lombard Street, published in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_
every month for five years a short account of the weather and prevalent
diseases of London, beginning with April, 1751, and ending with December,
1755. He had the weekly bills of mortality before him, and he makes
various comments upon them; but his accounts of prevalent diseases are
from his own observation and by way of illustrating the bills. His first
reference to a fever is under October, 1751: “A slow continual fever, with
acute pain in the forehead: not many attacked, few mortally.” The year
1752 was remarkably free from fevers until November, when we read of a
fatal fever which had rheumatic symptoms at first (as at Rouen in 1744),
attacking the head later, with coma-vigil and a dark-coloured ichor on the
tongue and lips. It continued into January and February, 1753, proving
fatal to several. In the summer and autumn months there were fevers of the
low, depressed kind, sometimes called “remittents,” with copious sweats,
or “slow, remitting, dangerous fever,” or “slow, treacherous, remittent
fever, too often fatal.” The references to it are most numerous in the
months from November, 1753, corresponding to Le Cat’s Rouen narrative. It
was slow and imperceptible in its approach, the sick often going about ill
for a week before seeking advice; it was attended with profuse sweats
which never relieved, and was fatal to many. It continued more or less
through the summer, and from August, 1754, it is again prominent. In
September, it was the most alarming form of disease, and was then commonly
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