Modern epidemics : influenza / by J. Foster Palmer.

  • Palmer, James Foster.
Date:
[1899]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Modern epidemics : influenza / by J. Foster Palmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    vagaries prevailed. Sometimes the disease was rare, mild and sporadic ; sometimes widespread and severe. In some epidemics it attacked by preference the respiratory tract, in others the nervous system, in others the alimentary canal. One of the earlier epidemics, that of a.d. 1580, is spoken of as “ the gentle correction ”. Great prostration, lasting for three days, was a constant symptom, but very few of the patients died. In reference to one occurring a century later, that of a.d. 1688, it was said that although not one person in fifteen escaped it, not one case in a thousand was fatal. On the other hand, that occurring ten years later (a.d. 1698), is spoken of as “a severe and awful catarrh”.* In a.d. 1729 it was very fatal in London, where 1000 people are said to have died of it each week. In a.d. 1803 the mortality was again great in Britain. In a.d. 1827 it was especially fatal and prevalent in the Netherlands, where it affected nearly the whole population.t In the beginning of a.d. 1837 it caused great mortality in England, Scotland, France, Spain, Den- mark, Sweden and Russia.£ Many writers on the disease have, apparently without sufficient reason, connected its preva- lence with cold, wet seasons. This appears to be a popular rather than a scientific view of its causation. In the Annals of Influenza, on the other hand, the precursory atmospheric conditions are carefully tabulated, and it is found that no less than fourteen, or more than three-fourths of the whole, were preceded, not necessarily by rain, which is an almost constant condition in our islands, but by comets, meteors, volcanic eruptions, and foul-smelling fogs. Writing of a later epidemic than these, that of Iceland in a.d. 1862, Dr. Hjaltelin says it was preceded by a dry, thick, ill-smelling fog, and prodigious swarms of flies. He considered it to be contagious and the result of an atmospheric miasm. The description of the disease leaves no doubt of its identity with the epidemic of * Forster, Atmospheric Origin of Epidemic Disorders, p. 163; Walford, Chronology of Pestilences, pp. 94, hi, 112. t Ibid., pp. 129, 134. X Ibid., p. 137. D 2