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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    fashionable. The harvest was less changeable, the year was fruitful and healthy, the Winter late. In the latter end of October and November were great floods. The winds after were very variable, but mostly South; the air foggy, thick, moist, vapid, often stagnant, long without sun, and very un- wholesome in Carniola and Augsburg. March the 1st began and reigned two months, an epidemic which missed few, and raged fatally like a plague in France and the Low Countries, and was brought by disbanded soldiers into England, viz., a Catarrhous Fever, called the Dunkirk Rant, or Dunkirk Ague; it lasted eight, ten, or twelve days. Its symptoms were a severe, short, dry cough, quick pulse, great pain of the head, and over the whole body, moderate thirst; sweating and diuretics were the cure. Bleeding very pernicious or fatal. This was a very moist, southerly, and unsettled constitution in England.”^ [Influenza prevailed in Dublin in the previous year, after a sudden transition of atmospheric temperature from heat to cold.]^ EPIDEMICS OF 1729-43. HUXHAM.'^ 1729 following observations were made exactly after the manner described by the celebrated Dr. Jurin, to . . ^ . in the ^Philosophical Transactions,^ No. 379, and which has been followed by almost every physical body, particularly that eminent one of Edinburgh. My Baro- meter consisting of a pretty large tube, to which is fitted a wide cistern, the quicksilver with which these are filled I had first of all carefully purified by distillation. The Thermometer, which is one of Hauksbee’s, is fixed in a convenient place. The barometer in the month of July, anno 1733, at low water-mark, stood at about forty-six feet; but from that time to this it has not exceeded thirty feet. I determined the degree of humidity of the air by several hygroscopes; the ‘ Dr. Short, (op. cit.) vol. I, p. 455. ^ Dr. Molyneux, Philosophical Transactions, Dublin, March, 1694. 3 Observations on the Air and Epidemical Diseases, by John Huxham. Translated from the Latin. Vol. I. London. 1758.