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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    In many abortion occnrrecl, and extreme menorrhagia^ inducing great inanitioud Etna was active this yeard The condition of London, about this period, has been thus described by an eloquent histoiian.] If the most fashionable parts of the capital could be placed before us, such as they were in the reign of Charles II., we should be disgusted with their squalid appearance, and poisoned by their noisome atmosphere. In Covent Garden, a filthy and noisy market, was held close to the dwellings of the gi*eat. Fruit women screamed, carters fought, cabbage stalks and rotten apples accumulated in heaps at the thresholds of the Countess of Berkshire and of the Bishop of Durham. St. Jameses Square was a receptacle for all the offal and cinders, for all the dead cats and dead dogs of Westminster. At one time, a cudgel player kept the ring there; at another time, an impudent squatter settled himself there, and built a shed for mbbish under the windows of the gilded saloons, in which the first magnates of the realm—Xorfolk^s, Ormondes, KenCs, and Pembroke's—gave banquets and balls. It was not till these nuisances had lasted a whole generation, and till much had been written about them, that the inhabitants applied to Parliament for permission to put up rails and to plant trees. 1688 Influenza or Short Fever^^ Gsited Dublin, in the year 1688, preceded by a distemper attended with nasal defluxion (probably glanders) among horses, especi- ally those belonging to the Army, then encamped on the Curragh of Kildare.] 1693 the beginning of November, 1693 (observes Alolyneux), after a constant coui’se of moderately warm weather for the season, upon some snow falling in the mountains and countries about the time, of a sudden it grew extremely cold, and soon after succeeded some few days of verv hard frost, Avhereupon Rheums of all kinds, such as violent coughs that chiefly affected in the night, great defluxion of thin rheum at the nose and eyes, immoderate discharge of the saliva by spitting, hoarseness in the voice, sore throats with some trouble in swallowing, wheezings, stuffings, and soreness in the breast; a dull heaviness and stoppage in the head, with such like dis- ‘ Peu, ‘ Pratique des Accouchemens.’ ^ Webster, (op. cit.) ’ Macauley, ‘History of England.’