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.

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    months. {Stoiv.) The weather for some years past having been extraordinary moist, wet, and rainy, wind South, at the rising of the Dog star came a cold, dry North wind. From the middle of August to the end of September, raged a malignant epidemic Catarrh; it began with a pain of the head, and feverish heat: some were disposed to sleep, others to watch- ing: presently followed a dry cough, pain of the breast, hask- ness and roughness of the throat, weakness of the stomach; at last, a terrible panting for breath, like dying persons. Though the cough lasted not long, yet the panting for breath continued to the fourteenth day; some sweated,^ such recovered the thirtieth or fortieth day; they did not expectorate much. With some the disease went off by stool, in others by urine. Though all had it, few died in these countries, except such as were let blood of, or had unsound viscera. Of the first, died in Rome at this time 2000. The cure consisted in repeated lenitives, cooling inciders, and pectorals. In other places it appeared somewhat different, according to the varying con- stitution of the season. “ In sundry places it begun with a weariness, heaviness, and painful sensation; heat and horrours seized the whole body, chiefly the breast and head, with a dry cough, hoarseness, roughness of the jaws, difficulty of breathing, weakness and languor of the stomach, vomiting green bile, like juice of leeks; which symptoms increased with the disease, as the fever, cough, weight and pain of the head, pricking pain of the ex- tremes, watching, dryness and roughness of the tongue, and shortness of breath. At the state of the disease all these were heightened, catarrh, cough, spitting. Some had swellings on the glands of the throat. In some it went off by stool; in others by urine or sweat, or bleeding at the nose. Some had spots. With some it ended in a pleurisy, peripneumony, or consumption; all recovered very slowly. This disease raged over all Europe at least, and prevailed for six weeks. Yet, if in any place it was preceded by a drought, bleeding gave the speediest and greatest relief; as at Montpelier, so as not one of a thousand died of it. The same epidemic returned in October and November that year; then bleeding even in these places ' [The violent perspirations wliich occasionally occurred led some physicians to apprehend that the sweating-sickness was about to return.]