Volume 1

Annals of influenza, or epidemic catarrhal fever in Great Britain, 1510-1837 / prepared and edited by Theophilus Thompson.

  • New Sydenham Society
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annals of influenza, or epidemic catarrhal fever in Great Britain, 1510-1837 / prepared and edited by Theophilus Thompson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    26/432 (page 6)
    [In 1556, there were showers of Blood, and an Eruption of Etna. The season was mostly wet; but in some countries dry. In the subsequent year a Comet appeared.] Tlils year and last (proceeds Dr. Short) was a great ’ scarcity of Corn from the past great rains. It was a very unseasonable year in England, all the corn was choaked and blasted, the harvest excessive wet and rainy; before harvest this year, wheat was sold at 4 marks per quarter; malt, at 44^. per quarter; pease, at 465. M. After harvest, wheat was sold at 55. per quarter in London, 45. in the country. Malt, at 65. 8c?., and in the country at 4-5. Sd. Bye, at 35. ^d. per quarter in London, and in some places at 4^/. per bushel, [ClarEs Ex.) Quartan Agues still reigned fatally. In some more remote countries, July, August, and September, were excessive hot and dry. In the end of September, came a very strong cold North wind; presently after were many Catarrhs, quickly followed by a most severe cough, pain of the side, difficulty of breathing, and a fever. The pain was neither violent nor pricking, but mild. The third day they expectorated freely. The sixth, seventh, or, at the farthest, the eighth day, all who had that pain of the side died; but such as were blooded the first or second day, recovered on the fourth or fifth; but bleeding on the last two days, did no service. Slippery, thickening linctuses, were found of most service. Broths, or spoon-meats, or moist foods, were good. But where the sea- son continued still rainy, the case was very different; for at Mantua Carpentaria, three miles from Madrid, the epidemic began in August, and bleeding or purging was so dangerous, that in the small town 2000 were let blood of, and all died. There it began with a roughness of the jaws, small cough, then a strong fever, with a pain of the head, back, and legs; some felt as though they were corded over the breast, and had a weight at the stomach; all which continued to the third day at farthest; then the fever went off with a sweat, or bleed- ing at the nose. In some few, it turned to a pleurisy, or fatal peripneumony.—At Alcmaria, this year in October, raged such an epidemic, as seized whole families at once. In that small place, died in three weeks 200 persons of this mortal peripneumony. It attacked like a catarrh, with a very slow and malignant fever, bringing, as it were, a sudden suffocation