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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    rested during the night in low situations, and on the ground. Even animals which feed on herbs and leaves, took a dislike to their pastures, which were apparently influenced by some virus in the air.1 Malignant Fever or Plague, Measles, and Smallpox, also raged with considerable virulence during the year 1580. Catarrh is said to have prevailed throughout Europe in 1610; but, with this exception, is scarcely noticed by authors between 1580 and 1658, a worse constitution, namely, that of Plague, superseding it during the greater part of that period.] EPIDEMIC OF 1658. WILLIS.2 “ An equally intense frost followed, the next Winter, the immoderate heat of the foregoing Summer, so that no one living could remember such a year, for either excess both of heat and cold. From the ides of December, almost to the vernal equinox, the earth was covered with snow, and the north wind constantly blowing, all things without doors were frozen; also, afterwards, from the beginning of the Spring, almost to the beginning of June, the same wind still blowing, the season was more like Winter than Spring j unless now and then a hot day came between. During the Winter (unless that a Quartan Feaver contracted in autumn infested some) among our countrimen, there was a moderate state of health, and freedom from all popular diseases. The Spring coming on, an intermitting Tertian (as used to do every year before) fell upon some. About the end of April, suddenly a Distemper arose, as if sent by some blast of the stars, which laid hold on very many together: that in some towns, in the space of a week, above a thousand people fell sick together. The par- ticular symptom of this disease, and which first invaded the 1 Salius Diversus de Febre Pestilente, Francof. 1586, p. 62. 2 The Description of a Catarrhal Feaver Epidemical in the Middle of the Spring, in the year 1658, taken the 4th June. Dr. Willis’s ‘ Practice of Physic; being the Whole Works of that renowned and famous Physician.’ London, 1684. Part I, on Feavers.