The cyclopaedia of practical medicine: comprising treatises on the nature and treatment of diseases, materia medica and therapeutics, medical jurisprudence, etc., etc (Volume 3).
- Date:
- 1849-59
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The cyclopaedia of practical medicine: comprising treatises on the nature and treatment of diseases, materia medica and therapeutics, medical jurisprudence, etc., etc (Volume 3). Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![was said to have attacked the British army while it was besieging Negapatam in November 1781. Its progress is stated by Webster, to have been from Siberia and Tartary westward. At Moscow it prevailed in December 1781; at Petersburgh in February 1782; and it was traced to Tobolski. It was in Denmark in the latter end of April. From the shores of the Baltic it spread to Hol- land and the Low Countries, and thence to Eng- land. London was said to be attacked sooner than the west and north; Ireland a few weeks later, and the south of Europe later still; for it prevailed in France in the months of June and July, in Italy in July and August, and in Portu- gal and Spain in August and September ; seldom continuing longer than six weeks in any place.* The influenza of the spring of 1803 afforded an occasion for collecting a great number of no- tices from different parts of the country on the subject of this epidemic. The London Medical Society set a laudable example by proposing a set of queries to its corresponding members in a cir- cular letter ; and the sixth volume of Memoirs contains reports from nearly sixty practitioners in England, Scotland, and Ireland, as to the date of its first appearance, its symptoms, treatment, &c. in their respective neighbourhoods. Dr. Beddoes also interested himself very zealously on the same occasion, and procured various testimonies from his friends and others, which, to the number of one hundred and twenty-four, are inserted in the ninth and tenth volumes of the London Medical and Physical Journal. These documents contain a mass of very useful information. This epidemic was observed at Paris and in other parts of France and in Holland some weeks before it appeared in London ; and Dr. Bardsley says the same length of time was occupied in its progress from the lat- ter city to Manchester. (Med. and Phys. Journ. vol. ix. p. 529.) Its course seemed to be from S. to N. It was in Cork and Dublin before it reached the north of Ireland, immediately after a S. E. wind. An epidemic ophthalmia followed it in France, (Diet, ut supra,') and a severe dysenteiy, such as had not been known for thirty years, in some parts of the United States, which it visited the same spring. (New York Med. Repos. 2d Hex. vol. ii. p. 141.) It was observed to be epi- demic in Sussex, and some of the counties in the S. W. as early as February ; in Shropshire, Not- tinghamshire, &c. in March ; in Yorkshire and Lancashire in April; and at Sunderland in May. (Mem. of Med. Soc. of London, vol. vi.) It was evident that there was a degree of progressive movement northward, by marking the time when it was at the height in each place; yet many of the accounts above alluded to inform us clearly that sporadic or solitary cases exhibiting the true characters of influenza, occurred in several places long before the disease became established, so as to manifest a universal tendency to that form of complaints over the country, in some cases weeks before it was quite developed. It is worthy of notice that this has been remarkably the case with the epidemic cholera. Dr. Gray observes that, in * Transactions of the College of Phys. vol. iii., and Med. Communications, vol. i. Rees' Cyclopiedia, Art. In- fiuenia: and Trotter's Med. Nautica, i. 362. Observa- tions on Dis. of Seamen, by G. Blane, M. D. p. 151. 1782, a complaint, similar to the influenza, was taken notice of in some parts of the kingdom several months before that disorder made its pro- gress through it. (Med. Commun. vol. i. p. 6.) The influenza of last year (1831), though generally mild in its character, was almost uni- versal ; for it would seem to have prevailed in both hemispheres in the same year. Accounts have been received of its appearance in India as well as in the United States of America. (Ameri- can Journ. of Science, &c. vol. xxi. No. 44, p. 407.) In many places it has been the precursor of the epidemic cholera. About a month before the latter disease broke out in Warsaw, it pre- vailed in that city. (Brierre de Boismont sur le Cholera, p. 110.) It also swept over great part of England, Scotland, and Ireland, in the spring and autumn, and preceded the milder visitation of epidemic cholera which many parts of Great Britain experienced the same year. Late in the autumn it attacked Paris, the south of Spain, Gibraltar, and Italy, with more severity than it did the British islands. At Rome it was said to occasion great alarm. It has certainly skipped over many countries of Europe in its march from Poland to France through England, so far as we can judge negatively from the want of official re- ports ; but, with this exception, it has pursued a course not widely different from that of similar former epidemics, and has proved to be a true herald of the epidemic cholera in many places. [In the epidemic of 1831, according to Most, (art. Influenza, in Encyclop.der gesammt.Medi- cin. und Chirurg. Praxis, Leip. 1836,) 30,000 people, it was asserted, were suffering at the same time in Berlin; and, at a later period, 45,000 in Paris. Another severe epidemic prevailed in Eu- rope and the United States in 1837 ; and another in 1843. Of the European epidemics of 1831, 1833, and 1837, the two first were less severe, and attacked fewer individuals than the last.] II. The influenza does not seem to have exhi- hibited a greater variety of symptoms, in its dif- ferent visitations, than other epidemics. It has varied a little in town and country, in spring and autumn, at the beginning and end of the epi- demic, in different persons, and according to the particular genus or tendency of the epidemic constitution; but still it has maintained some prominent characteristics of its identity at differ- ent periods. The ordinary course of the disease has been marked by the following symptoms :—it usually commenced with slight chills, amounting sometimes to shiverings, and alternate flushings of heat, with languor and sense of extreme weari- ness : then, soreness over the eyes, or pain in the course of the frontal sinuses : these were quickly followed by frequent sneezing, a copious discharge of lymph or thin clear fluid from the nose and eyes, sometimes so acrid as to excoriate the upper lip ; heat and soreness in the top of the larynx and oesophagus, and along the course of the windpipe, with hoarseness and dry cough; sense of stricture in the chest and difficulty of breath- ing, sometimes attended with darting pain in the muscles subservient to respiration ; weight and anxiety about the prrecordia, flying pains in the back, knees, calves of the legs, and various parts of the body; depression of spirits, and sudden](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21116829_0013.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
