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

Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    During the prevalence of Influenza in Britain, Spain was afflicted with Sweating-sickness.]1 “ In the previous year, September 14th, was an Earthquake at Constantinople, and the countries thereabouts ; it demolished a great part of the city walls and stately buildings, and slew 13,000 people. It lasted a month with very little intermis- sion; after it came a Plague, which almost depopulated the city.” (Turk’s History.) 1513 “This year a great mortality prevailed in England, say our historians; they call it (as indeed all dis- eases) the Plague; but to know what it was, we must consult Foreigners. Says Cole, when dearth, scarcity of com, famine, rainy seasons, and severe cold ones, had afflicted Italy for two years, and people were forced to eat uncommon and unwhole- some food, arose an epidemic contagious Fever, with a dy- sentery, and black spots over the whole body. And from this want of food, great weakness, and unhealthy juices, they had a pale cacco-chimic and depraved countenance, a swelling of their feet, and difficulty of breathing.” [The following account of the habits of our countrymen at this period, in a letter from Erasmus to the Physician of Cardinal Wolsey, may here be appropriately introduced.2 “ I often grieve and wonder how it happens, that Britain has now, for so many years, been afflicted with a continual Plague, and chiefly with the Sweating-sickness, which is a malady that seems almost peculiar to the country. We have read of a state being delivered from a long-continued pesti- lence by changing the style of building, upon the advice of a philosopher. If I am not deceived, England may be freed in a similar manner. In the first place, the English have no regard to what quarter of the Heavens their windows or doors are turned; in the next, their sitting-rooms are generally so constructed, as to be incapable of being ventilated, which is a thing that Galen particularly recommends. Furthermore, a great part of the wall is made transparent by glass plates (or squares), which admit the light, but exclude the wind: and 1 Villalba (Don Joaquin de), ‘ Epidemiologia Espanola,’ 2 tom., Madrid, 1803. 2 Des Erasmi. Epist. (Lugdun. Batav.), tom. iii, epist. 432, (as translated in ‘Retrospective Review,’ vol. v, p. 24; 1703.)