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
“Nor did any other method, which art could afford, relieve them:
insomuch that many of the little country towns and villages were
almost stripped of their poor people, not only in the country adjacent
to Ripon, but all over the northern parts of the kingdom: indeed I had
no certain account of what distempers those who were at a distance
died of, but suppose they were the same as those which I have
mentioned, which were nearer to us. Bleeding, pectorals with
volatiles, and antiphlogistic diluters and blistering, were the most
successful. I observed that very few of the richer people, who used a
more generous way of living, and were not exposed to the inclemencies
of the weather, were seized with any of these diseases at this
time.... The quartans were very subject to turn into quotidians, and
sometimes to continual, in which the sick were frequently delirious.”
The Yorkshire accounts by Wintringham and Hillary for the second year of
this epidemic period, the year 1728, are very full, as regards the
symptoms or types of the fevers; but it would be tedious to cite them at
length, and unnecessary to do so unless to answer the not inconceivable
cavil that the fevers were not of the nature of typhus in one or other of
its forms. The chief point is that the second year, towards Midsummer,
brought a fever with the symptoms of _synochus_, and not rarely marked
with small red spots like fleabites or with purple petechiae. In the
autumn of 1729, Hillary noticed a fever of a slow type, which might go on
as long as thirty days and end without a perfect crisis--the nearest
approach to enteric fever in any of the descriptions. For the same years,
1727-29, Huxham, of Plymouth, describes languid fevers of the “putrid”
type, with profuse sweating, followed by typhus of a more spotted type.
Like the Yorkshire observer, Huxham mentions also “intermittents” as mixed
with the continued fevers.
The great prevalence of these fevers, “intermittents and other fevers,” in
the west of England in 1728-29 was known to Dr Rutty of Dublin, who speaks
especially of “the neighbourhoods of Gloucester and London, and very
mortal in the country places, but less in the cities.” This is confirmed
by Dover:
“I happened to live in Gloucestershire in the years 1728 and 1729,
when a very fatal epidemical fever raged to such a degree as to sweep
off whole families, nay almost whole villages. I was called to several
houses where eight or nine persons were down at a time; and yet did
not so much as lose one patient where I was concerned[119].”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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