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 signs given by Willis are as nearly as may be the signs of infantile
remittent fever, or worm fever, or febris synochus puerorum, or hectica
infantilis, or febris lenta infantum, or an acute fever with dumbness, of
which perhaps the first systematic account in this country was given by Dr
William Butter of Lower Grosvenor Street, in 1782[11]. It is, he says,
both a sporadical and an epidemical disease, “and when epidemical it is
also contagious.” The age for it is from birth up to puberty; but “similar
symptoms are often observed in the disorders of adults.” Morton, writing
in 1692-94, clearly points to the same fever under the name of worm fever
(febris verminosa). He adds it at the very end of his scheme of fevers, as
if in an appendix, having been unable to find a place for it in any of his
categories owing to its varying forms--hectic, acute, intermittent,
continued, συνεχής, inflammatory, but for the most part colliquative or
σύνοχος, “and malignant according to the varying degrees of the venomous
miasm causing it[12].” Butter also recognizes its varying types: it has
many symptoms, but they seldom all occur in the same case; there are three
main varieties--the acute, lasting from eight to ten days up to two or
three weeks; the slow, lasting two or three months; and the low, lasting
a month or six weeks. The slow form, he says, is only sporadic; the low is
only epidemic, and is never seen but when the acute is also epidemical; it
is rare in comparison with the latter, and not observed at all except in
certain of the epidemical seasons. Waiving the question whether the
remittent fever of children, thus systematically described, was not a
composite group of maladies, of which enteric fever of children was one,
we can hardly doubt that Willis found a distinctive uniform type in the
epidemic of 1661, in Oxford as he saw it himself, in other parts of
England by report. It had symptoms which were not quite clearly those of
enteric fever: spots, like fleabites, on the neck and other parts,
swelling and suppuration of the glands in the hinder part of the neck,
effusion of fluid on the brain and in the lateral ventricles, and the
intestine free from disease[13].
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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