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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    In many abortion occurred, and extreme menorrhagia, inducing great inanition.1 Etna was active this year.2 The condition of London, about this period, has been thus described by an eloquent historian.] “ 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 great. 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 rubbish under the windows of the gilded saloons, in which the first magnates of the realm—Norfolk’s, Ormond’s, Kent’s, 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.”3 ^ggg [An Influenza or “ Short Fever” visited 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 “About the beginning of November, 1693 (observes Molyaeux), after a constant course 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 very hard frost, whereupon 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- 1 Peu, ‘ Pratique des Accouchemens.’ 5 Webster, (op. cit.) 3 Macauley, ‘ History of England.’