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

1614. In 1617 he published his ‘Surgion’s Mate,’ “chiefly for the benefit

722 words  |  Chapter 79

of young sea-surgions imployed in the East India companies affairs,” and dedicated it to Sir Thomas Smith, himself a navigator, and then chairman of the Court of Directors. This practical manual is largely occupied with the management of fractures, dislocations, amputations, and the like, a part of his subject wherein Woodall was thoroughly competent; but there appears also in the title, “the cure of the scurvie, the fluxes of the belly, of the collica and iliaca passio, tenasmus and exitus ani, the callenture.” The section on scurvy, twenty-six pages long, is the one that here concerns us. This was what Sir Richard Hawkins had desired: “And I wish that some learned men would write of it, for it is the plague of the sea and the spoil of mariners.” Woodall begins by disclaiming learning: “A learned treatise befits not my pen.” But, at all events, his was the voice of the faculty, and he plunges boldly into pathology in the very first lines: “Scurvy is a disease of the spleen, whereby it is sometimes wholly stopped” etc. Being a man of much good sense, Woodall quickly leaves that line of remark, for a time at least. He repeats all the familiar experience of Hawkins, Lancaster, and the numerous captains of East Indiamen, with whom he must have conversed many times (it does not appear that he had himself sailed). He mentions the great benefit to the crews from landing at the Cape, with the fresh air and food, scurvy being thereby cured “without much other help.” He enforces the need of changes of clothing, and other things in the regimen on board, just as Hawkins and others were wont to do in practice. He is as clear on the virtues of lime-juice as Lancaster, and copies somewhat closely the practice of the latter in 1601: “each morning two or three spoonfuls, and fast after it two hours”; his originality appearing in the rider, grateful to seamen: “and if you add one spoonful of aqua vitae thereto, to a cold stomach it is the better.” He mentions that a “good quantity of juice of lemons is sent in each ship out of England, by the great care of the merchants, and intended only for the relief of every poor man in his need.” The ship’s surgeon is advised to lay in a store of fresh lemons and oranges where they were to be had on the voyage, and of tamarinds at Bantam. So far, Woodall merely sets down what every shipmaster knew as to the things that bring on scurvy, the best regimen to keep it off, and the extraordinarily rapid curative effect of lime-juice and of change to land air and fresh food. But there was a certain professional doctrine of scurvy, and a treatment of it _secundum artem_, namely the wisdom of learned men which Hawkins had called for; and we have now to see what that was, according to Woodall. His pathology is that of “obstructions,” a curious fancy of the learned[1149]. The spleen, said Woodall in his opening lines, is the chief seat of obstruction; but on resuming the pathology, he proceeds to obstructions also of the liver and brain: “But it is plain that this grief is a lazy foul disease with obstructions of the liver, or spleen, or both; as also it appeareth that the head is much diseased, and that there is great obstructions in the brain, for that the eyes not only look evil coloured, but also the gums putrefy, and the teeth grow loose, and all the sinewy parts of the body bear their part in the disease, for the shrinking and withering of the sinews, with the great pains the party hath, declareth no less” (p. 180). This theoretical pathology Woodall supports by an appeal to morbid anatomy: “Also it is manifest that divers of those which have been opened after death have had their livers utterly rotted”-others having their livers much swollen, and the spleen swollen, others full of water, others their lungs putrefied and stunk while they have lived, (which last may have been an incorrect inference from the foul state of the mouth). Such being the pathology of the disease, he comes next to the indications of cure; and these he takes from “a famous writer, Johannes Echthius.” They are:
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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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