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 only years in the period from 1803 to 1816 in which there was some
slight increase of fever were about 1811-12. There was undoubtedly some
distress in the manufacturing districts at that time, owing to the much
talked-of Orders in Council, which had the effect of closing American
markets to British manufactures[295].
The small amount of fever in London between the year 1803 and the
beginning of the epidemic of 1817-19 rests on the testimony of
Bateman[296], who in 1804 took up Willan’s task of keeping a systematic
record of the cases at the Carey Street Dispensary. He has only two
special entries relating to typhus: one in the autumn of 1811, when some
cases occurred in the uncleanly parts of Clerkenwell and St Luke’s (“but I
have not learned that it has existed in any other districts of London”);
the other in October and November 1813, when there was more typhus among
the Irish in some of the filthy courts of Saffron Hill, near Hatton
Garden, than for several years past, the infection having spread rapidly
and fatally in several houses. The best evidence of this lull in typhus in
London is the almost empty state of the new fever-hospital:
Year Admissions
1802 164
1803 176
1804 80
1805 66
1806 93
1807 63
1808 69
1809 29
1810 52
1811 43
1812 61
1813 85
1814 59
1815 80
1816 118
1817 760
Until it was removed to Pancras Road, in September, 1816, the London
fever-hospital had only sixteen beds. But Bateman says that no one was
refused admission, and that for several years the house was frequently
empty three or four weeks together. Also at the Dispensary, in Carey
Street, he had an opportunity during the period 1804-1816,
“Of observing the entire freedom from fevers enjoyed by the
inhabitants of the numerous crowded courts and alleys within the
extensive district comprehended in our visits from that charity.” And
again, writing in the winter of 1814-15, Bateman says: “To those who
recollect the numerous cases of typhoid fevers [this term did not then
mean enteric] which called for the relief of dispensaries twelve or
fourteen years ago, and the contagion of which was often with great
difficulty eradicated from the apartments where it raged, and even
seized the same individuals again and again when they escaped its
fatal influences, the great freedom from these fevers which now
exists, even in the most close and filthy alleys in London, is the
ground of some surprise.” And once more, in the summer of 1816, just
as the new epidemic period was about to begin, he says: “The
extraordinary disappearance of contagious fever from every part of
this crowded metropolis during the long period comprehended by these
Reports [since 1804], cannot fail to have attracted the attention of
the reader.”
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