A History of Epidemics in Britain, Volume 1 (of 2) by Charles Creighton

Book II. p. 36.

7420 words  |  Chapter 104

[1122] Hakluyt, _The Principal Navigations_, &c. 3 vols. London, 1599, III. 225-6. [1123] Pericarditis scorbutica--a condition which has been observed mostly in Russia in recent times. The whiteness of the heart would have been due to the fibrinous layer of lymph on its surface, from the pericarditis. [1124] Hakluyt, III. 241. [1125] Hakluyt, II. Part II., pp. 22, 36, 48. [1126] Hakluyt, III. 501. [1127] Sir James Stephen’s _Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography_, pop. ed. p. 125. [1128] Hakluyt, II. pt. 2, p. 99. [1129] The famous figure in _Paradise Lost_ (IV. 159) is taken from the route to India passing within Madagascar--a poetic colouring of dreary and painful realities:-- As when to them who sail Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past Mozambik, off at sea north-east winds blow Sabean odours from the spicy shore Of Araby the blest; with such delay Well pleas’d they slack their course, and many a league Cheer’d with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles: [1130] _The World Encompassed_ &c., Hakluyt Society, ed. Vaux, p. 149, and Hakluyt, III. 740. [1131] _A summarie and true discourse of Sir Francis Drake’s West Indian voyage begun in the year 1585._ Published by M. Thomas Cates. Shortened in Hakluyt, III. 542. The earlier part of the narrative is by Captain Bigges, and, after his death in the West Indies, by his lieutenant, Croftes. [1132] Mr Froude (_History_, XII. 150) must be pronounced somewhat happy in his bold guess of “yellow fever.” At the same time the enthymeme by which he had reached his conclusion is altogether wrong: first, in assuming that the infection “broke out” after the capture of Cartagena, ignoring the fact of its disastrous prevalence in mid-ocean two or three months before, shortly after leaving the Cape de Verde islands; and secondly in assuming that the yellow fever for which Cartagena and other harbours of the Spanish Main became notorious in later times had existed as an infection there in the 16th century. [1133] Sir Richard Hawkins, who commanded the galliot ‘Duck’ in Drake’s expedition of 1585, thus refers to the Cape de Verde islands, on the occasion of touching there in his own expedition to the Pacific in 1593 (Purchas, IV. 1368): These islands are “one of the most unhealthiest climates in the world. In two times that I have been in them, either cost us the one half of our people, with fevers and fluxes of sundry kinds, some shaking, some burning, some partaking of both; some possesst with frensie, others with slouth; and in one of them it cost me six months’ sickness, with no small hazard of life.” He then gives a reason for the great risk to health: the north-east breeze about four in the afternoon seldom faileth, “coming cold and fresh, and finding the pores of the body open and for the most part naked, penetrateth the very bones, and so causeth sudden distemperature, and sundry manners of sickness, as the subjects are divers whereupon they work. Departing out of the calmes of the Islands, and coming into the fresh breeze, it causeth the like; and I have seen within two days after that we have partaked of the fresh air, of two thousand men above an hundred and fifty have been crazed in their health.” This seems to refer to the epidemic in Drake’s fleet, as given in the text; but it is clearly an imperfect account of the facts, and in theory altogether improbable, as a trade wind within the tropic cannot be credited with such effects, even if the forms of sickness were conceivably due at all to chill. Darwin (_Naturalist’s Voyage in the Beagle_, p. 366) says: “The island of St Jago, at the Cape de Verde, offers another strongly-marked instance of a country, which anyone would have expected to find most healthy, being very much the contrary. I have described the bare and open plains as supporting, during a few weeks after the rainy season, a thin vegetation, which directly withers away and dries up; at this period the air appears to become quite poisonous; both natives and foreigners often being affected with violent fevers. On the other hand, the Galapagos Archipelago, in the Pacific, with a similar soil, and periodically subject to the same process of vegetation, is perfectly healthy.” But the Galapagos have been uninhabited, except in recent times by two or three hundred people banished from Ecuador. On the other hand the Cape de Verde islands are believed to have been at one time well wooded and not unfertile; and the Portuguese settlements in them, to say nothing of the native negro villages, had a fair population. It is not easy to understand the pernicious character of their fevers without assuming that spots of soil had become pestilential by human occupancy; but it is at the same time clear that a degree of befouling of the soil which would be innocuous in ordinary, would there engender deadly miasmata owing to the remarkable alternations of drought and wetness under a tropical sun. [1134] Hakluyt, III. 286. [1135] Mr Hubert Hall, of the Record Office, in _Society in the Elizabethan Age_. London, 1886, p. 120. [1136] Hakluyt, III. 583. [1137] Hakluyt, III. 804, 820; and other details in the 1st ed. (1589) pp. 809, 810. [1138] Hakluyt, III. 842-52. [1139] Purchas, IV. Bk. 7, Chap. 5, (reprinted from Hawkins’s own narrative of the voyage, published a few months after the author’s death in 1622). [1140] Mr J. K. Laughton (_Dict. of National Biography._ Art. “Hawkins, Sir Richard”) points out that Hawkins’s narrative of the ‘Daintie’s’ voyage had not always been authenticated by reference to notes or documents. It seems probable also, from his remarks on the epidemic in Drake’s fleet after leaving the Cape de Verde islands in 1585, that he trusted his memory too much. But that objection of writing from memory has no force as against his general observations and reflections on scurvy. [1141] Purchas, part IV. p. 1877. [1142] _Ibid._ p. 1623. [1143] Woodall defends the use of biscuit in his _Surgeon’s Mate_, published in 1617. [1144] Purchas, III. 847. [1145] _The Voyages of Sir James Lancaster, Knight, to the East Indies._ Hakluyt Society, ed. Clements Markham, 1878; and in Hakluyt’s _Principal Navigations_, II. pt. 2, p. 102. [1146] The slowness of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope in old times was due less to the build or rig of the ships than to the course shaped: instead of steering southwest from Madeira across the Atlantic almost to the coast of Brazil at Cape San Roque, so as to get the north-east trade wind, and thence on another tack in a wide sweep round to the Cape with the south-east trade wind, the earlier navigators sailed past the Cape de Verde islands and along the Guinea coast, keeping within meridians 20 degrees to the eastward of the modern track, and so falling into the tropical calms at one part, and at another part of the voyage into the baffling south-east trades, varying in force according to the season. [1147] Purchas, I. 147. [1148] _Calendar of State Papers._ East Indies (under the respective dates). [1149] It seems to have passed into common usage, as “to lie in cold obstruction and to rot” (_Meas. for Meas._ III. 1), and to have been kept up therein after the faculty had dropped it--if indeed Byron’s line, “Where cold Obstruction’s apathy” be a survival of medical terminology. There is an instance of the same kind of survival in the use of “scorbutic;” at one time land-scurvy was detected (under the influence of theory) in many forms, and we find in the _Pickwick Papers_ a late reminiscence of that singular dogma in the “young gentleman with the scorbutic countenance.” [1150] The three earlier instances from Purchas, I. 248, 466, the later from the _Cal. State Papers_, East Indies. [1151] _Cal. S. P._ Colonial. East Indies. Dec. 24, 1628. [1152] _Ibid._ Feb. 6, 1626, p. 146. [1153] _William Hedges’ Diary._ Hakluyt Society, 1887, I. 24, 54. [1154] _A Letter of M. Gabriel Archar_, in Purchas, pt. IV. p. 1733; Smith’s _Virginia_, in Pinkerton, XIII. 99; W. Strachey, in Purchas, pt. IV. p. 1753. [1155] Theobald makes this the storm and shipwreck which Shakespeare brings into the _Tempest_. [1156] Purchas, IV. p. 1762. [1157] _Cal. S. P._ America and West Indies. [1158] Dermer, in Purchas, IV. p. 1778: Belknap’s _American Biography_ (“Life of Gorges”), I. 355. [1159] John Winthrop’s _Journal_, p. 11. [1160] Winthrop, I. pp. 119, 123. [1161] _Ibid._ II. 310. [1162] Refs. in Noah Webster’s _Hist. of Epid. and Pestil. Diseases_. Hartford, 1799, I. 189, 191, 193. [1163] Letter of Norris, in _Hist. of S. Carolina_, I. 142. [1164] Saco, _History of African Slavery in the New World_ (Spanish). Barcelona, 1879. [1165] Oviedo, in Purchas, III. 996:--“Extract of Gonzalo Ferdinando de Oviedo:--‘I had acquaintance with divers which went in the first and second voyages of Columbus; of which was Peter Margarite, commendator in the second voyage, of most respect with the king and queen, who complained of those paines. [Syphilis was prevalent in Barcelona and Valencia previous to 1494. See Chapter VIII.] Soon after, in the year 1496, began the disease to arrest some courtiers; but in those beginnings it was only amongst baser persons of small authority; and it was thought that they got it by having to do with common women. But afterwards it extended to principal persons, and the physicians could not tell what to think of it, so that many died.’... But indeed it came from Hispaniola, where it is ordinary, and the remedy also [guaiacum]. _Our author_ (_l. c._ civ.), and Ramusio in his preface to his third Tome, say that the souldiers of Pamfilo de Nuney, having the small pocks, infected the Indians which never before heard of that disease; in so much that of 1,600,000 soules in that island there are so few left, as by and by you shall hear.... The covetousnesse of the mine-workers, neglect of diet, change of gouvernours growing worse and worse, caused them to poison, kill and hang themselves, besides those which were consumed by infectious or pestilentiall pocks (those before mentioned out of Ramusio) and other diseases.” [1166] _Calendar of State Papers._ Amer. & W. I., I. 57. [1167] _Ibid._ [1168] _Cal. S. P._ Amer. & W. I., under the respective dates. [1169] The account that follows is taken from Father Dutertre’s _Histoire generale des Antilles habitées par les François_, 4 vols., Paris, 1667-1671, which superseded his earlier work of 1654. [1170] _Cal. S. P._ Amer. & W. I., II. 529. [1171] Ligon, _Hist. of Barbadoes_. London, 1657. [1172] Winthrop’s _Journal_, II. 312. [1173] Dutertre, _Hist. gen. des Antilles habitées par les François_. 4 vols. Paris, 1667-1671. [1174] _Cal. State Papers_, Amer. and W. I., I. 301. [1175] The chronology of yellow-fever epidemics in Hirsch (I. 318) is made to begin with Guadeloupe, 1635 and 1640, on the authority of Dutertre (as above), the epidemic of 1647 at Bridgetown being the third in order. [1176] Benjamin Moseley, M.D., _Treatise on Tropical Diseases, and on the Climate of the West Indies_, 3rd ed. (1803), p. 476. [1177] Hughes, _The Natural History of Barbados_. London, 1750, p. 37. [1178] _Cal. S. P._ Amer. and W. I., under the dates. [1179] In Sir John Hawkins’ second voyage as a slaver (1565), he was allowed to trade on the Spanish Main only for his “lean negroes,” which were within the purchasing means of the poorer Spaniards. The voyage had been tedious, and the supply of water short “for so great a company of negroes.... Many never thought to have reached to the Indies without great death of negroes and of themselves; but the Almighty God, who never suffereth His Elect to perish,” etc. Hakluyt, III. 501. [1180] Clarkson, _History of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade_. New ed., Lond. 1839, pp. 307, 352. He showed his prepared document to Pitt:-- “Mr Pitt turned over leaf after leaf, in which the copies of the muster-rolls were contained, with great patience; and when he had looked over about a hundred pages accurately, and found the name of every seaman inserted, his former abode or service, the time of his entry, and what had become of him, either by death, discharge, or desertion, he expressed his surprise at the great pains which had been taken in this branch of the inquiry; and confessed, with some emotion, that his doubts were wholly removed with respect to the destructive nature of this employ.” (p. 273.) [1181] T. Aubrey, M.D., _The Sea-Surgeon, or the Guinea Man’s Vade Mecum_. London, 1729, p. 107. [1182] Gillespie, _Obs. on the Diseases in H. M.’s Squadron on the Leeward Island Station in 1794-6_. Lond. 1800. [1183] For example, Mr R. L. Stevenson in a striking passage of _Treasure Island_. [1184] Thurloe’s _State Papers_, III. IV. and V.; _Harl. Miscell._ III. 513; Long’s _History of Jamaica_, 3 vols. London, 1774; _Cal. S. P._, Amer. and W. I. [1185] _Harl. Miscel._ _l. c._ [1186] Sir Anthony Shirley touched at Jamaica in 1596, and reported, “we have not found in the Indies a more pleasant and wholesome place.” Hakluyt, III. 601. Long (_History of Jamaica_, 1774, II. 221) states the case very fairly with reference to the unfortunate expedition of Venables in 1655: “The climate of the island has unjustly been accused by many writers on the subject, the one copying from the other, and represented as almost pestilential, without an examination into the real sources of this mortality, which being fairly stated, it will appear that the same men carrying the like thoughtless conduct and vices into any other uninhabited quarter of the globe, must infallibly have involved themselves in the like calamitous situation.” [1187] _MS. State Papers_, _Colonial_ (Record Office), Vol. XIV. No. 57 (1660). [1188] Thomas Trapham, M.D., _Discourse of the State of Health in Jamaica_. Lond. 1679. [1189] Moseley, _op. cit._ p. 421, without reasons given; followed by Hirsch. _Geog. and Hist. Pathol._ (English transl.), I. 318. [1190] _Hist. of Jamaica_, III. 615. [1191] _Cal. S. P._ Amer. and W. I. [1192] _Cal. S. P._ Amer. and W. I. 1669-74, § 144. [1193] _Ibid._ § 264, III. [1194] With a preface by the Printer to the Reader, beginning “The reprinting of these sad sheets.” Printed and are to be sold by E. Cotes, living in Aldersgate Street, printer to the said Company. [1195] The advertisement is cited in Brayley’s edition of Defoe’s _Journal of the Plague Year_. [1196] Sloane MS. no. 349. Λοιμογραφια, _or, An experimental Relation of the Plague, of what happened remarkable in the last Plague in the City of London_, etc. By William Boghurst, Apothecary in St Giles’ in the Fields. London, 1666. [1197] Reprinted in _A Collection of very Valuable and Scarce Pieces relating to the last Plague in the year 1665_. London, 1721. [1198] Λοιμολογια. London, 1671. Translation by Quincy, 1720. [1199] Λοιμοτομια, _or, the Pest Anatomized_. By George Thomson, M.D. London, 1666. [1200] London, 1667. [1201] Among the crop of books brought up by the Plague of Marseilles, in 1720 (the immediate cause of Defoe’s book also) was one by Richard Bradley, F.R.S., a writer upon botany, on _The Plague of Marseilles. Also Observations taken from an original Manuscript of a graduate physician, who resided in London during the whole time of the late plague, anno 1665._ London 1721 (and two more editions the same year). The title-page of this astute gentleman is of the catch-penny order. All that is said of the original manuscript occupies about the same number of lines in the text as in the title, and might have been extracted in the course of five minutes’ research; it consists merely of a list of a few things supposed to be distinctive signs of plague--extraordinary inward heat, difficulty of breathing, pain and heaviness in the head, inclination to sleep, frequent vomiting, immoderate thirst, dryness of the tongue and palate, and then the risings, swellings, or buboes. Boghurst’s third chapter is occupied with twenty-one such signs, and his fourth chapter with a hundred more signs and circumstances, in numbered paragraphs. It is possible that his was the manuscript out of which the botanist made capital in his title-page; but his meagre list of signs might have been got from almost any work on almost any febrile disorder, and is not sufficient to identify Boghurst by, although a word or phrase here and there is the same. However, Defoe would have seen Bradley’s title-page, and might have inquired after the Sloane MS. [1202] Of the six plague-deaths in 1664, three were in Whitechapel parish, and one each in Aldgate, Cripplegate and St Giles’s-in-the-Fields. [1203] _Reliquiae Baxterianae._ London, 1696, I. 448. This entry in his journal is dated September 28, 1665, at Hampden, Bucks. [1204] _Ed. cit._ Chap. XIV. p. 131:--“Diseases which seem to be nearest like its (plague’s) nature; which chiefly are fevers, called pestilent and malignant; for ’tis commonly noted that fevers sometimes reign popularly, which for the vehemency of symptoms, the great slaughter of the sick, and the great force of contagion, scarce give place to the pestilence; which, however, because they imitate the type of putrid fevers, and do not so certainly kill the sick as the plague, or so certainly infect others, they deserve the name, not of the plague, but by a more minute appellation of a pestilential fever.” [1205] In a letter from London, 9 May, 1637 (Gawdy MSS. at Norwich, _Hist. MSS. Commis._ X. pt. 2. p. 163) it is said: “There is a strange opinion here amongst the poorer sort of people, who hold it a matter of conscience to visit their neighbours in any sickness, yea though they know it to be the infection.” [1206] Evans, in preface to 1721 edition of Vincent’s book. [1207] _Cal. State Papers._ [1208] _Ibid._ [1209] Evans, _l. c._ [1210] _Reliquiae Baxterianae._ London, 1696, II. 1. 2. [1211] Milton, with his wife and daughters, spent the summer and autumn in the same quiet neighbourhood, at Chalfont St Giles, in a cottage which Ellwood had secured for him, still remaining with its low ceilings and diamond window-panes. He there showed Ellwood the manuscript of _Paradise Lost_, which was published in 1667. The poem contains no reference to the plague, unless, indeed, the flight to the country had given point to the lines in the 9th book: “As one who long in populous city pent, Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air, Forth issuing on a summer’s morn, to breathe Among the pleasant villages and farms,”-- An opportunity arises in the 12th book, where the Plagues of Egypt come into the prophetic vision of events after the Fall; but the movement is too rapid to allow of delay, and we have no more than-- “Botches and blains must all his flesh emboss, And all his people.” Gibbon thought that the comet of 1664 (which was generally remarked upon as a portent of the plague that followed) might have suggested the lines, II. 708-11 “and like a comet burn’d, That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair Shakes pestilence and war.” Gibbon seems to make a slip in taking these as “the famous lines which startled the licenser;” those are usually taken to have been I. 598-9, the figure of the sun’s eclipse, which “with fear of change Perplexes monarchs.” [1212] _Brit. Mus. Addit. MS._ 4376 (8). “Abstract of several orders relating to the Plague,” from 35 Hen. VIII. to 1665. [1213] In excavating the foundations of the Broad Street terminus of the North London Railway, the workmen came upon a stratum four feet below the surface and descending eight or ten feet lower, which was full of uncoffined skeletons. Some hundreds of them were collected and re-interred. (_Notes and Queries_, 3rd Ser. IV. 85.) The ground was part of the old enclosure of Bethlem Hospital (St Mary’s Spital outside Bishopsgate), and was acquired for a cemetery, to the extent of an acre, by Sir Thomas Roe, in 1569. Probably there were plague-pits dug in it during more than one of the great epidemics, from 1593 to 1665. [1214] _Cal. State Papers_, Domestic, 1665, p. 579. [1215] _Reliquiae Hearnianae._ Ed. Bliss, 1869, II. 117 (under the date of Jan. 21, 1721). [1216] _The City Remembrancer._ London, 1769 (professing to be Gideon Harvey’s notes). [1217] Procopius (_De Bello Persico_, II. cap. 23, Latin Translation) says the same of the great Justinian plague in A.D. 543 at Byzantium: “ut vere quis possit dicere, pestem illam, seu casu aliquo seu providentia, quasi delectu diligenter habito, sceleratissimos quosque reliquisse. Sed haec postea clarius patuerunt.” On this Gibbon remarks: “Philosophy must disdain the observation of Procopius, that the lives of such men were guarded by the peculiar favour of fortune or Providence;” and most men will agree with Gibbon. But, if we could be sure of the fact of immunity (and Boghurst’s testimony is a little weakened by his deference to Diemerbroek, who knew the classical traditions of plague), it might be possible to explain it on merely pathological grounds. [1218] John Tillison to Dr Sancroft, September 14, 1665. Harl. MSS. cited by Heberden, _Increase and Decrease of Diseases_. London, 1801. Woodall, writing in 1639, and basing on his experience of London plague in 1603, 1625, and 1636, is in like manner emphatic that the symptoms varied much in individuals and in seasons. [1219] _Cal. State Papers._ _Hist. MSS. Com._ IX. 321. [1220] _Cal. State Papers._ _Cal. Le Fleming MSS._ p. 37 (also for Cockermouth). [1221] _Ibid._ [1222] Mead seems to have known that there were plague-cases at Battle in 1665. [1223] _Cal. S. P._ [1224] _Hist. MSS. Com._ II. 115. [1225] _The History and Antiquities of Eyam, with a full and particular account of the Great Plague which desolated that village A.D. 1666._ By William Wood, London, 1842. This small volume, which owes its interest solely to the plague-incident, has gone through at least five editions. Among those who have written, in prose or verse, upon the same theme, Wood mentions Dr Mead, Miss Seward, Allan Cunningham, E. Rhodes, S. T. Hall, William and Mary Howitt, S. Roberts, and J. Holland. The story is also in the _Book of Golden Deeds_. [1226] Bacon (_Sylva Sylvarum_, Cent. X. § 912. Spedding II. 643) says: “The plague is many times taken without a manifest sense, as hath been said. And they report that, where it is found, it hath a scent of the smell of a mellow apple; and (as some say) of May-flowers; and it is also received that smells of flowers that are mellow and luscious are ill for the plague: as white lilies, cowslips and hyacinths.” [1227] Sir Thomas Elyot, in _The Castle of Health_ (1541), says that “infected stuff lying in a coffer fast shut for two years, then opened, has infected those that stood nigh it, who soon after died.” (Cited by Brasbridge, _Poor Man’s Jewel_, 1578, Chapter VIII.) [1228] Milner’s _Hist. of Winchester_. [1229] _The City Remembrancer_, Lond. 1769, vol. I.--an account of the plague, fire, storm of 1703, etc., said to have been “collected from curious and authentic papers originally compiled by the late learned Dr [Gideon] Harvey.” But the section on the plague is almost purely Defoe and Vincent, with a few things from Mead. [1230] These figures, with the two oaths, had been copied by the antiquary Morant for his _History of Essex_, and are preserved in No. 87. ff. 55 and 56, of the Stowe MSS. in the British Museum, where Mr J. A. Herbert, of the Manuscript Department, pointed them out to me. In his printed _History_ Morant has summarized the plague-deaths in monthly periods. The Bearers’ Oath, fol. 57:-- “Ye shall swear, that ye shall bear to the ground and bury the bodys of all such persons as, during these infectious times, shall dye of the pestilence within this Towne or the Liberties thereof, or so many of them as ye shall have notice of, and may be permitted to bury, carrying them to burials always in the night time, unless it be otherwise ordered by the Mayor of this Towne; And ye shall be always in readiness for that purpose at your abode, where you shall be appointed, keeping apart from your families together with the searchers, and not to be absent from thence more than your office of Bearers requires. Ye shall always in your walk, as much as may be, avoid the society of people, keeping as far distant from them as may bee, and carrying openly in your hands a white wand, by which people may know you, and shun and avoid you. And shall do all other things belonging to the office of Bearers, and therein shall demean yourselves honestly and faithfully, discharging a good conscience; So etc. _August 1665._ JAMES BARTON and JOHN COOKE:--sworn, who are to have for their pains 10 sh. a week a piece; and 2d for every one to be buried, taking the 2d out of the estate of the deceased. If there be not wherewithal, the parish to bear it. Oath 6. p. 44. The Oath for the Searchers of the Plague, 1665. “Yee and either of You shall sweare, that ye shall diligently view and search the corps of all such persons, as during these infectious times, shall dye within this Towne or the Liberties thereof, or so many of them as you shall or may have access unto, or have notice of; And shall according to the best of your skill, determine of what disease every such dead corps came to its death. And shall immediately give your judgment thereof to the Constables of the parish where such corps shall be found, and to the Bearers appointed for the burial of such infected corps. You shall not make report of the cause of any one’s death better or worse than the nature of the disease shall deserve. Yee shall live together where you shall be appointed, and not walk abroad more than necessity requires, and that only in the execution of your office of Searchers. Ye shall decline and absent yourselves from your families, and always avoid the society of people. And in your walk shall keep as far distant from men as may be, always carrying in your hands a white wand, by which the people may know you, and shun and avoid you. And ye shall well and truly do all other things belonging to the office of Searchers, according to the best of your skill, wisdom, knowledge, and power, in all things dealing faithfully, honestly, unfeignedly and impartially. So help” etc. [1231] Morant, _Hist. of Essex_, I. 74. [1232] Deering, _Nottingham_, vetus et nova, 1751, pp. 82-83. Copied in Thoresby’s edition of Thoroton’s _History of Nottingham_, II. 60. Transcriber’s Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. Passages in bold are indicated by =bold=. Superscripted characters are indicated by {superscript}. *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF EPIDEMICS IN BRITAIN, VOLUME 1 (OF 2) *** Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed. Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Chapters

1. Chapter 1 2. CHAPTER I. 3. CHAPTER II. 4. CHAPTER III. 5. CHAPTER IV. 6. CHAPTER V. 7. CHAPTER VI. 8. CHAPTER VII. 9. CHAPTER VIII. 10. CHAPTER IX. 11. CHAPTER X. 12. CHAPTER XI. 13. CHAPTER XII. 14. CHAPTER I. 15. introduction of a miracle, and is otherwise more circumstantial. While the 16. episode of the seventh century, to which he devotes thirty-eight lines of 17. CHAPTER II. 18. 1307. Future research may perhaps discover where Gilbert taught or was 19. introduction of maize into Lombardy at an interval of two or three 20. CHAPTER III. 21. 3939. The population of the same three parishes in 1558, or shortly after 22. 3639. It may be assumed to have lost more than half its people; but it 23. 1741. The Institution Book of the diocese of Norwich, he says (with a 24. CHAPTER IV. 25. 1349. The pestilence had lasted some fourteen months, from its first 26. CHAPTER V. 27. 1528. If there were any better regimen in the later epidemics than in the 28. 1551. Sweating sickness of the original sort was never again the _signum 29. CHAPTER VI. 30. 1563. 12 June 17 31. 1564. 7 January 45 32. 1518. In April of that year, the Court being in Berkshire or Oxfordshire, 33. 1. First a ’tre from the Mayor of London to every alderman of each 34. 2. To cause all infected houses to bee shutt up and noe person to come 35. 3. That some honest discreete person be appoynted to attend each such 36. 4. For the poorer houses infected that the Alderman or his deputy doe 37. 5. That such as shall refuse to pay what they are assest shall be 38. 6. That all bedding and cloathes and other thinges apt to take 39. 7. Lastly that a bill with ‘Lord have mercy upon us’ in greate ’tres 40. 1. That they should follow the good example of the orders devised and 41. 2. That the officers aforesayde with the curate of euery parish and 42. 3. To discharge all inmates out of all houses that there be noe more 43. 4. To cause the streetes lanes and passages and all the shewers sinkes 44. 1. That speciall noatis be taken of such houses infected as sell 45. 2. That euery counstable within his precinct haue at all tymes in 46. 3. That noe person dwelling in a house infected bee suffered to goe 47. 4. That they suffer not any deade corps dying of the plague to be 48. 5. To appoynt two honest and discreete matrons within euery parish who 49. 6. That order be taken for killing of dogs that run from house to 50. 2. The restraining of the building of small tenements and turning 51. 4. The increase of buildings about the Charterhouse, Mile End Fields; 52. 5. The pestering of exempt places with strangers and foreign 53. 8. The killing of cattle within or near the city. 54. 1588. In 1585 houses were shut up[685]; in 1586 a case at Southwell was 55. 1. First to command that no stinking doonghills be suffered neere the 56. 2. Every evening and morning in the hot weather to cause colde water 57. 3. And whereas the infection is entred, there to cause fires to be 58. 4. Suffer not any dogs, cattes, or pigs to run about the streets, for 59. 5. Command that the excrements and filthy things which are voided from 60. 6. That no Chirurgions, or barbers, which use to let blood, do cast 61. 7. That no vautes or previes be then emptied, for it is a most 62. 8. That all Inholders do every day make clean their stables, and cause 63. 9. To command that no hemp or flax be kept in water neere the Cittie 64. 10. To have a speciall care that good and wholesome victuals and corne 65. 11. To command that all those which do visit and attend the sick, as 66. 1597. In August there were 23 deaths, and in September 42 deaths. The 67. 1588. It was said to have been brought to Wester Wemyss, in Fife, by a 68. CHAPTER VII. 69. 1494. Typhus-fever, or war-fever with famine-fever, now begins to be a 70. CHAPTER VIII. 71. CHAPTER IX. 72. introduction of a third term, _punctilli_, which Gruner, however, takes to 73. 1538. They may be farther helped to a conclusion by the following curious 74. CHAPTER X. 75. 10. In the second place, no deaths are included from the out-parishes 76. 1624. The letters of the time enable us to see what it was that disturbed 77. CHAPTER XI. 78. 12. On December 7, Mr Yorke, captain of the ‘Hope,’ died of sickness, on 79. 1614. In 1617 he published his ‘Surgion’s Mate,’ “chiefly for the benefit 80. 4. The comforting and corroborating the parts late diseased. 81. CHAPTER XII. 82. 1625. His account of the burials by the cart-load in plague-pits is also 83. 1636. An importation from abroad had been alleged as early as the great 84. 1665. Its two great predecessors (not reckoning the smaller plague of 85. 1662. These fractions have been added in the table, so as to make 1603 86. 1666. There was also a sharp epidemic in Cambridge and in the country 87. introduction of inferior bread, 224 _note_ 88. Introduction, p. lxxvi. 89. 110. Aelred, the chief collector of the miraculous cures by Edward the 90. 220. The late Rev. S. S. Lewis, fellow and librarian of the College, who 91. 449. He says also: “The school doors were shut, colleges and halls 92. Introduction, p. 11. 93. 4585. (_Hist. MSS. Commission_, V. 444.) 94. 1878. _Med. Times and Gaz._ I. 1878, p. 597. 95. 1873. (Transact. Camb. Antiq. Soc. 8vo. series, vol. XIV.) 96. 1589. New ed. 1596, p. 272. 97. 1580. Brassavolus, writing _de morbo Gallico_, and illustrating the fact 98. 29. Stow puts the mortality under the year 1513. 99. Chapter VIII. London, 1578). 100. 198. Mr Rendle, in one place, seems to imply disapproval of this mode of 101. 1525. The same kind of misdating occurs among the printed letters of 102. 260. Brusselle, 1712. 103. 171. Buried in the parish of Stepney from the 25th of March to the 20th of 104. Book II. p. 36.

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