113. Sir W. Cecil writing from Westminster to Sir T. Smith on 29th

December [1563] says: “The cold here hath so assayled us that the Queen’s majestie hath been much troubled, and is yet not free from the same that I had in November, which they call a pooss, and now this Christmas, to keep her Majestie company, I have been newly so possessed with it as I could not see, but with somewhat ado I wryte this. We have had perpetuall frosts here sence the 16th of this month. Men doo now ordinarily pass over the Thamiss, which I thynk they did not since the 8th yere of the reign of King Henry the VIII.” _Ibid._ I. 157. For “poss,” see note p. 305. [548] _Ephemer. Meteorol. anni 1561_ [for the latitude of Brabant]. Antwerp, 1561: “Tusses numero infinitae atque tanta contagionis vi praestabunt ut pauci immunes reliquant, praecipuè circa mensis finem.” The almanacks of those times must have been constructed on the same principle as the weather forecasts of our own time--namely, that of using the experience of one year for the next, just as the weather of one day is an indication for the next. In 1575 Dr Richard Foster (who became president of the College of Physicians in 1601) issued an almanack in which he foretold “sweating fevers” for the month of July (_Ephemer. meteorol. ad ann. 1575._ Lond. 1575). Cogan says that Francis Keene, an astronomer, also prophesied the return of the sweating sickness in 1575, “wherein he erred not much, as there were many strange fevers and nervous sickness.” [549] Johan Boekel, Συνοψις _novi morbi quem plerique medicorum catarrhum febrilem, vel febrem catarrhosam vocant, qui non solum Germaniam, sed paene universam Europam graviss. adflixit_. Helmstadtii, 1580. [550] Hoker’s “Irish historie ... to the present year 1587,” p. 165a in Holinshed’s _Chronicles_. [551] This very moderate increase of the deaths in London in 1580 may be compared with the probably fabulous figures which Webster (I. 163) gives for continental cities the same year: Rome, 4000 deaths, Lübeck, 8000 deaths, Hamburg, 3000 deaths. I have given the weekly deaths and baptisms in London for five years, 1578-82, in my former volume, p. 341. [552] There is a curious reference to “the sweat” in Shakespeare’s _Measure for Measure_, Act I. scene 2, where the bawd, in an aside, says: “Thus, what with the war, what with the sweat, what with the gallows, and what with poverty, I am custom-shrunk.” It is known that Shakespeare adapted and condensed his play from Whetstone’s _Promus and Cassandra_, printed in 1578, who took it from an Italian romance. But Whetstone’s dialogue, which is pointless and verbose beside Shakespeare’s, gives an entirely different speech to the bawd at the same place in the action, making no reference to “the sweat.” The date of _Measure for Measure_ is not certain; but it seems to belong to the earlier period of Shakespeare’s work, when he was adapting old plays most freely. Whatever its date, the war, the sweat, the gallows and poverty are evidently topical allusions pointed enough for the audience to have taken up. [553] The year 1610 is mentioned by Short as a season of universal catarrhal fever abroad; but that epidemic is not in the modern chronologies of influenza. [554] Chamberlain to Carleton in _Court and Times of James I._ I. [555] Same to same 4 Nov. 1612. _Ibid._ I. p. 201. [556] _Court and Times of James I._ I. p. 206. [557] _Ibid._ p. 208. [558] _Court and Times of James I._ p. 197. [559] _Ibid._ p. 237. [560] _Ibid._ Letter of 25 Nov. 1613. [561] _Cal. Coke MSS._ I. 83. [563] Graunt, _Obs. upon the Bills of Mortality_, 1662. [564] Robert Boyle did not attach much importance to the name of “new disease.” “The term _new disease_,” he says, “is much abused by the vulgar, who are wont to give that title to almost every fever that, in autumn especially, varies a little in its symptoms or other circumstances from the fever of the foregoing year or season.” (Boyle’s _Works_. 6 vols. 1772, V. 66.) But it was the name commonly given to the epidemics of catarrhal fever among others, and it does not appear, when the history is examined closely, that it was ever given except to some epidemic separated by several years from the last of the kind. [565] Sir R. Leveson’s Letters. _Hist. MSS. Commiss._ V. 146. [566] Pp. 568-577. [567] Πυρετολογια _sive Gulielmi Dragei Hitchensis_ Ιατρου καὶ Φιλοσοφου _Observationes ab Experientia de Febribus Intermittentibus_. Londini, 1665. [568] His tract is dated 1641. [569] By Nicholas Sudell, licentiate in physick and student in chimistry. London, 1669. [570] Πυρετολογια. _A rational account of the Cause and Cure of Agues, with their signs, Diagnostick and Prognostick. Also some Specified Medicines prescribed for the Cure of all sorts of Agues, &c. Whereunto is added a short account of the Cause and Cure of Feavers and the Griping in the Guts._ Authore Rto. Talbor, Pyretiatro. Londini, 1672. [571] Sir Thomas Watson (_Practice of Physic_, I. 725) has a story which shows how long these fancies, encouraged by quacks, may linger: “A coachman by whose side I sat while travelling from Broadstairs to Margate was speaking of the rarity of ague in that part of the Isle of Thanet. His father, he said, once had the complaint, and a fit came on while he was on a visit to him, the coachman, at Ramsgate. The son administered to his suffering parent a glass of brandy; whereupon ‘he threw the agy off his stomach; and it looked for all the world like a lump of jelly.’” [572] Philip Guide, M.D., _A Kind Warning, &c._ Lond. 1710. [573] The best summary of the “history of the use of Peruvian bark” is by Sir George Baker, in _Trans. Col. Phys._ III. (1785), 173. [574] Cited by Baker, _l. c._ p. 190. [575] _Lives of the Norths._ New ed. by Jessopp. Lond. 1890, III. 188. [576] He fell into a kind of decline and died at his country house on 5 September, Dr Radcliffe having been summoned from London without avail. [577] Baker, _l. c._, “Had not physicians been taught by a man whom they, both abroad and at home, vilified as an ignorant empiric, we might at this day have had a powerful instrument in our hands without knowing how to use it in the most effectual manner.” This was written at a time when physicians spoke of “throwing in the bark”--throwing it in “with a shovel,” as an Edinburgh professor used to say. [578] John Barker, M.D., of Sarum, and afterwards physician to the forces, says in 1742 (in his essay on the epidemic fever of 1741, u. s. p. 112) that he had Sydenham’s letter in manuscript before him, and that it was written in October, 1677. [579] Cited by Baker, _Trans. Col. Phys._ III. 208. [580] Beaufort MSS. _Histor. MSS. Com._ XII. App. 9, p. 85. [581] Evelyn’s _Diary_, under the date of 29 Nov. 1694. [582] Evelyn; Luttrell, I. 327. [583] _Hist. MSS. Com._ V. 186. Sutherland correspondence. [584] _The Diary of John Evelyn_, under the date 4 Feb. 1685. [585] The popular imagination at the time appears to have been most impressed by Dr King’s promptitude in whipping out his lancet. Roger North must have had it incorrectly in his mind when he wrote: “About the time of the death of Charles II., it grew a fashion to let blood frequently, out of an opinion that it would have saved his life if done in time.” [586] _Obs. Med._ 3rd ed. 1675, V. 5. [587] Ralph Thoresby, _Ducatus Leodiensis_, ed. Whitaker, App. p. 151. Brand, _Hist. of Newcastle_, under the year 1675, says that “the jolly rant” caused 724 deaths in that town, the authority given being Jabez Cay, M.D., who left his papers to Thoresby. The number given is probably the mortality from all causes. [588] Patrick Walker’s _Life of Cargill_, pp. 29, 30. [589] _Synopsis Nosologiae._ 3rd ed. Edin. 1780, II. 173. [590] _Epist. respons. ad R. Brady_, § 42. [591] Luttrell (_Diary_, I. 23) enters under Oct. 1629: “About the middle of this month vast great rains fell which have been very prejudiciall to many persons.” [592] Christopher Love Morley, M.D., _De Morbo Epidemico tam hujus quam superioris Anni, id est 1678 et 1679 Narratio_. Preface dated London, 31 Dec. 1679. [593] Lady Chaworth to Lord Roos, _Calendar of the Belvoir MSS._ II. 47. [594] _Lives of the Norths. Ed. cit._ III. 143. [595] Luttrell’s _Historical Relation_. Oxford, 1857, I. 19. [596] Luttrell, _loc. cit._ I. 20, 21, 44. [597] On 16 March, the illness of “little Frank ... hath made me suspect some kind of aguish distemper; but, if it be, it is so little that we neither perceive coming nor going.” On 7 July, another child is recovered of her feverish distemper. On 5 October, “all my little ones are very well, but some of my servants have quartan agues.” _Lives of the Norths_, Letters of Anne, Lady North. [598] An authentic case of these lingering epidemic agues was that of John Evelyn in the beginning of 1683. On 7th February, 1687, he writes: “Having had several violent fits of an ague, recourse was had to bathing my legs in milk up to the knees, made as hot as I could endure it; and sitting so in a deep churn or vessel, covered with blankets, and drinking carduus posset, then going to bed and sweating. I not only missed that expected fit, but had no more, only continued weak that I could not go to church till Ash Wednesday, which I had not missed, I think, so long in twenty years”--in fact, since his “double tertian” in 1660, which kept him in bed from 17th February to 5th April. [599] Ralph Thoresby caught it at Rotterdam, suffered from it, in the tertian form, for several weeks of October and November, 1678, and brought it home with him to Leeds. He gives a good account of the illness in his _Diary_ (2 vols. Lond. 1830). [600] _The History of this present Fever, with its two products, the Morbus Cholera and the Gripes._ By W. Simpson, Doctor in Physick. London, 1678. [601] _Cal. Belvoir MSS._ II. 120. June, 1688. Bridget Noel to the Countess of Rutland. [602] Walter Harris, M.D., _De morbis acutis infantum_. Lond. 1689. English transl. by Cockburn, 1693, p. 88. [603] “Historical Account of the late General Coughs and Colds, with some Observations on other Epidemical Distempers.” _Phil. Trans._ XVIII. (1694), p. 109. [604] “’Twas very remarkable that in England as well as this kingdom a short time before the general fever, a slight disease, but very universal, seized the horses too: in them it showed itself by a great defluxion of rheum from their noses; and I was assured by a judicious man, an officer in the army of Ireland, which was then drawn out and encamped on the Curragh of Kildare, there were not ten horses in a regiment that had not this disease.” Molyneux, u. s. [605] Evelyn says nothing of a great epidemic cold in this season, but makes the following remarks on the weather: “Oct. 31. A very wet and uncomfortable season. Nov. 12. The season continued very wet, as it had nearly all the summer, if one might call it summer, in which there was no fruit, but corn was very plentiful.” [606] Molyneux, _Phil. Trans._ XVIII. (1694), p. 105. [607] “An universal cold that appeared in 1708, and was immediately preceded by a very sudden transition from heat to cold in Dublin and its vicinity.” Molyneux’s _Memoirs_. [608] _La Grippe_ may, of course, be taken literally to mean seizure; but the common use of the word seems to have been figurative for some fancy that seized many at once and became the fashion. [609] Joannes Turner, M.D., _De Febre Britannica Anni 1712_. Lond. 1713, pp. 3, 4. [610] Mead, _Short Discourse concerning Pestilential Contagion_. Lond. 1720, p. 8. But Short, who wrote in 1749, places the “Dunkirk rant” under the year 1710: (_Air, Weather, &c._ I. 455).--“March 1, began and reigned two months an epidemic which missed few, and raged fatally like a plague in France and the Low Countries, and was brought by disbanded soldiers into England, namely a catarrhous fever called the Dunkirk rant or Dunkirk ague.... It lasted eight, ten, or twelve days. Its symptoms were a severe, short, dry cough, quick pulse, great pain of the head and over the whole body, moderate thirst, and sweating. Diuretics were the cure.” [611] “The effects and evidences of God’s displeasure appearing more and more against us since the incorporating union [1707], mingling ourselves with the people of these abominations, making ourselves liable to their judgments, of which we are deeply sharing; particularly in that sad stroke and great distress upon many families and persons, of the burning agues, fevers never heard of before in Scotland to be universal and mortal.” _Life and Death of Alexander Peden._ 3rd ed. 1728. _Biog. Presb._ I. 140. [612] Boyle’s _Works_. Ed. 1772, V. 725. [613] _Ibid._ V. 49. [614] _Scotia Illustrata._ Edin. 1684. Lib. II. “De Morbis,” p. 52. [615] _Commentar. Nosolog._ Lond. 1727. [616] _The Method and Manner of curing the late raging Fevers, and of the danger, uncertainly and unwholesomeness of the Jesuit’s bark._ Dated 6 Dec. 1728: “You see that intermitting fevers, when they come to be chronical (and you may see it almost everywhere) make room for a great many distempers, and those very difficult to cure.” p. 49. [617] _An Enquiry into the Causes of the Present Epidemical Diseases, viz. Fevers, Coughs, Asthmas, Rheumatisms, Defluxions, &c._ By the author of “The Family Companion for Health.” London, 1729, pp. 6, 7. [618] “Variations of the weather and Epid. Diseases, 1726-34 at Ripon.” Appendix to _Essay on the Smallpox_. Lond. 1740, p. 35. [619] _Comment. Nosol._ p. 142. [620] This epidemic appears to have made a much greater impression in Italy. The _Political State of Great Britain_ for 1730, p. 172, under the date of 12th January, N. S. speaks of “the influenza, a strange and universal sickness and lingering distemper,” as causing thirty deaths a day in the public hospital of Milan, as well as fatalities at Rome, Bologna, Ferrara and Leghorn, including the deaths of two cardinals. [621] _Chronological History_, p. 10. [622] _Edinburgh Medical Essays and Observations_, II. p. 22, Art. 2. “An Account of the Diseases that were most frequent last year in Edinburgh” (June, 1832 to May, 1833): There had been tertian agues throughout the month of June, 1732, and from August to October an epidemic in the suburbs and villages near Edinburgh, of a slow fever, having symptoms like the “comatose” fever of Sydenham, or the remittent of children. [623] _Op. cit._ p. 47. [624] John Arbuthnot, M.D., _Essay concerning the Effects of Air on Human Bodies_. London, 1733, p. 193. His remarks upon the “hysteric” maladies that were common after the wave of influenza in Jan.-Feb. 1733, are referred to in the chapter on Continued Fevers, along with the corresponding information from Hillary, of Ripon. [625] _Gent. Magaz._ 1733, Jan. p. 43. [626] Huxham, _Obs. de aere et morbis epidemicis_, 1728-52, _Plymuthi factae_. [627] _De Aere, &c._ pp. 3, 136-8. [628] Rutty, _Chronol. Hist. of Diseases in Dublin_. Lond. 1770. [629] Pringle, _Diseases of the Army_, p. 16. [630] _Letters of Horace Walpole_, ed. Cunningham, I. 235. [631] _Gent. Magaz._ XIII. May 1743, p. 272. [632] R. Chambers, _Domestic Annals of Scotland_, III. 610. [633] Rutty, u. s. under the year 1743. In an earlier passage, he says that the influenza of 1743 raised the Dublin weekly bills to a highest point of 67, so that it must have been very slight in that city. [634] Huxham, _Obs. de aere etc._, 2nd ed. 3 vols. Lond. 1752-70, II. 99. [635] W. Watson, _Phil. Trans._ LII. 646. [636] _Cleghorn, Observations on the Epidemical Diseases in Minorca, 1744-49_, p. 132. [637] This influenza was observed in the North American Colonies. It is noteworthy that Huxham, of Plymouth, records under October, 1752, that hundreds of people at once had cough, sore throat, defluxions from the nose, eyes and mouth, attended with a slight fever, and more or less of a rash, several having a great flux of the belly.--_On Ulcerous Sore Throat_, 1757, p. 13. [638] W. Hillary, M.D., _Obs. on ... Epid. Diseases in Barbadoes_. Lond. 1760. [639] It is not described for England, unless a reference by Bisset for Cleveland, Yorkshire, should apply to it. Short says, under the year 1758 (_Increase and Decrease of Mankind in England, &c._ 1767): A healthy year in general, “only in the harvest was a very sickly mortal time among the poor, of a putrid slow fever, which carried off many. An epidemic catarrh broke out in November, and made a sudden sweep over the whole kingdom.” Barker, of Coleshill, says, in his _Putrid Constitution of 1777_ (Birmingham, 1779, p. 49): “In the remarkable intermittents of 1758 or 9 ... the early and consequently injudicious use of the bark was attended with such fatal effects that a few doses only sometimes totally oppressed the head, brought on a most rapid delirium, and cut off persons in half-an-hour.” [640] Robert Whytt, M.D., “On the Epidemic Disorder of 1758 in Edinburgh and other parts of the South of Scotland.” _Med. Obs. and Inq. by a Society of Physicians_, 6 vols. Lond. II. (1762), p. 187. With notices by Millar, of Kelso, and Alves, of Inverness. [641] Archibald Smith, M.D., “Notices of the Epidemics of 1719-20 and 1759 in Peru,” &c. from the Medical Gazette of Lima, on the authority of Don Antonio de Ulloa. _Trans. Epid. Soc._ II. pt. 1, p. 134. [642] Horace Walpole’s _Letters_, ed. Cunningham, III. 281. [643] C. Bisset, _Essay on the Medical Constitution of Great Britain, 1 Jan. 1758, to Midsummer 1760_. Lond. 1762, p. 279. [644] Extract from the parish register printed by Dr G. B. Longstaff in an appendix to his _Studies in Statistics_. Lond. 1891, p. 443. [645] _Increase and Decrease of Mankind in England &c._ London, 1767. [646] Rutty, _op. cit._ p. 275. Compare Watson, _supra_, p. 351. [647] G. Baker, _De Catarrho et de Dysenteria Londinensi epidemicis, 1762_, Lond. 1764; W. Watson, “Some remarks upon the Catarrhal Disorder which was very frequent in London in May 1762, and upon the Dysentery which prevailed in the following autumn.” _Phil. Trans._ LII. (1762), p. 646. [648] Professor Alexander Monro, _primus_, of Edinburgh, describes his own attack in a letter to his son, Dr Donald Monro, 11 June, 1766 (_Works of Alex. Monro, M.D. with Life_, Edin. 1781, p. 306): “My case is this: in May, 1762, I had the epidemic influenza, which affected principally the parts in the pelvis; for I had a difficulty and sharp pain in making water and going to stool. My belly has never since been in a regular way, passing sometimes for several days nothing but bloody mucus, and that with considerable tenesmus” &c. Dysentery was epidemic in 1762 as well as influenza. [649] Donald Monro, M.D., _Diseases of the British Military Hospitals in Germany, &c._ Lond. 1764, p. 137. [650] _Med. Trans. published by the College of Physicians in London_, I.