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:
1845
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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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    CYCLOPAEDIA OF PRACTICAL MEDICINE. INFLUENZA. (Epidemic Catarrh.) The disease now commonly known by this name, first given to it by the Italians, was not particularly noticed by physicians before the sixteenth century. Since that period it has many times appeared in Europe and in other quarters of the globe. In- fluenza seems to bear the same relation to ordinary catarrh that epidemic cholera bears to the common or sporadic cholera that occurs every year. Of all epidemic diseases it is the most universal; and the rapidity of its march and extent of its range over land and sea, sometimes in both hemispheres and in different climates, in opposite seasons and in all varieties of weather, among people of all classes, naturally led to the supposition that some extraordinary influence could alone give rise to such a wide-spreading malady. The French call it la grippe, under which name Sauvages first described the epidemic catarrhal fever of the year 1743. To collate the various accounts of any one visi- tation of this epidemic, such, for example, as that of 1775, or of 1782, or of 1803, in order to deduce some general principles respecting its mode of propagation, pathology, or treatment, would oc- cupy a considerable treatise: it must, therefore, be an elaborate task to draw general conclusions from all the records we now possess of this singu- lar disease, and to condense them in a space suitable for a work like the present. Limited by this circumstance, we shall take a brief survey, first, of the most remarkable dates of its appear- ance and progress in the last three centuries ; se- condly, its symptomatology; thirdly, its treat- ment ; fourthly, facts and general inferences rela- tive to the causes of it, such as phenomena of the weather and diseases among brutes : fifthly, its contagious property; and, sixthly, its influence on other diseases, and connection with diarrhoea, dysentery, and cholera. 1. We find no medical description of the epi- demic catarrhal fever before the year 1510. It was called coccoluche, because the sick wore a cap close over their heads. The symptoms of the disease, as it then occurred, nearly resembled those which it has assumed in later visitations, namely, severe pain over the eyes, sneezing, coryza, heaviness, difficulty of breathing, hoarseness, loss of strength and appetite, fever and harassing cough. Schenk says that physicians then looked upon it as a new disease. Its course seems to have been in a north-westerly direction, from Malta to Sicily, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, and Britain ; and Short says that it attacked at Vol.111 3 b» once, and raged over all Europe, not missing a family, and scarce a person, and that none died except some children. In some it went off with a looseness; in others by sweating. Bleeding and purging did hurt. (Short's Chronol. Hist, of the Weather, &c. vol. i. p. 204 ; and Diet, des Scien. Med. Art. Grippe, p. 351.) In 1557, an epidemic of the same nature pre- vailed in different countries. Fonseca says that in this year it infested Asia, thence came to Con- stantinople, and having spread itself all over Europe, afterwards attacked America, its course being westerly. Mercatus asserts that before the beginning of autumn 1557, it attacked all parts of Spain at once, so that the greatest part of the population in that kingdom were seized with it almost on the same day. (See Report, by Dr. Glass, in Lettsom's Memoir of Dr. Fothergill, 4to. p. 625.) Riverius has transmitted to us an ac- count of this epidemic. Unlike that of 1510, it was fatal to many : in a small town near Madrid, Mantua Carpentaria, bleeding was said to be so fatal that two thousand patients died after it in September. (Short's Hist. vol. i. p. 223.) At Alkmaer, in Holland, two hundred died of it in October. The catarrhal epidemic fever of 1580 was dis- tinguished by its complication with maUgnant fever or plague, as related by Forcstus and Sen- nertus. {Did. ut supra.) The latter speaks of its ravages at the end of summer and the begin- ning of autumn all over Europe ; in some parts of which, as in Paris, it was Ww. precursor of the plague. (Webster's Hist, of Epidemics, vol. i. p. 263.) It was in Sicily in June, at Rome in July, in August at Venice and Constantinople, in Sep- tember in Hungary and Germany, in October on all the Baltic coast, in November in Norway, in December in Denmark, Sweden, Poland, and Russia; its course being from E. and S. to W. and N. (Short's Hist. vol. i. p. 262.) Mercatus says that it raged also in Spain, and destroyed not a few. {Dr. Glass, ubi supra.) Grand Cairo lost a prodigious multitude the same year by the plague. It is a remarkable fact, and ought not to escape our notice, that France appears to have been the only country in Europe atVccted that year by the plague; and it appears also to have been the first to be visited by the epidemic catarrh, its precursor; so that Buldutius even dales its origin from France. (Siiort's Hist. i. 2G2.) The influenza of 1658, of which Willis has left us an account, visited Europe and this king- dom suddenly in April, and after excessive heat