3(52 



SPOTTED FEVER. 



description of Tacitus, were passionately devoted 

 to gaming. " They addict themselves," says he, 

 " to dice when sober, and as a serious employment, 

 with such a mad desire of winning or losing, that, 

 when stripped of every thing else, they will at last 

 stake their liberty and their very selves. The loser 

 suffers himself to be bound and sold." Cards (q. v.) 

 are of modern invention ; and the games at cards 

 ure some of them purely games of chance, others of 

 chance and skill combined. The laws of some 

 countries, as of England, prohibit gaming. France, 

 up to the 1st Jan., 1838, when the system was 

 abolished, had licensed gaming-houses, from which 

 a considerable revenue was drawn. Henry VIII. 

 of England issued a proclamation against unlawful 

 games, in consequence of which dice, cards, tables 

 and bowls, were seized and destroyed in many places, 

 though he himself was a great gambler ; and we read 

 of his losing much of the plunder of the suppressed 

 abbeys at games of chance. Suspected gamesters, 

 in England, may be brought before magistrates, and 

 required to. find sureties not to play or bet during 

 twelve months, to the amount of twenty shillings, 

 and, in default of sureties, may be imprisoned. 



SPOTTED FEVER. An epidemic disease, now 

 generally recognised by the name of spotted fever, 

 prevailed extensively in many parts of New Eng- 

 land, and in some parts of several of the other 

 American states, at different times between the 

 years 1806 and 1815. A few cases of the disease 

 occurred in Medfield, Massachusetts, about thirty 

 miles south-west of Boston, in March, 1806. The 

 number was small, however, not exceeding twenty, 

 and the disease did not extend itself so as to attract 

 general attention until the following year. In 

 March and April, 1807, it appeared in Hartford, 

 Connecticut, and in several other places on the 

 Connecticut river : a"fid also in Williamstovvn, in 

 the north-western part of Massachusetts, on the 

 Green mountain range. It disappeared during the 

 summer, but returned the following winter, visiting, 

 in some instances, the same places, besides many 

 others in the same neighbourhoods and similar situa- 

 tions, and also attacking other and detached parts 

 of New England. The disease followed a similar 

 course for several succeeding years. It disappeared 

 during the summer, and recurred with the return of 

 winter ; and for several years, until 1813, it became, 

 each year, more extensive and more destructive. 

 In some of these years, it also prevailed extensively 

 in the interior of the states of New York and Penn- 

 sylvania. In 1812, the troops of .the United States' 

 army suffered by it severely at various places in 

 New York and Vermont. After 1813, the disease 

 rapidly diminished, although it still remained de- 

 structive, especially in some parts of Maine. It 

 finally ceased in the spring of 1815. The last place 

 visited by it, so far as our information extends, was 

 Berwick, and Maine. There have, indeed, been 

 occasional reports of the prevalence of a similar 

 disease, at different times since that period; but it 

 may well be doubted whether any of them actually 

 refer to the true spotted fever as it prevailed from 

 1807 to 1815. This concise sketch of the progress 

 of the epidemic shows that it prevailed much less 

 in summer than in winter. In fact, it was only 

 during a part of the colder season of the year that 

 the disease raged the most severely. Unlike the 

 ordinary typhus fever, it was much less frequent 

 through the autumn and the early part of winter 

 than during the later months of winter and the first 

 months of spring. 



It is worthy of remark, that the disease, in a 

 great measure, avoided the large towns on the seu- 

 coast. Although it pervaded, at different times, 

 almost the whole of the interior of New England, 

 Boston and the other large towns were only slightly 

 visited by it. In the interior also, the epidemic 

 was not more prevalent, perhaps even less so, in the 

 larger and more crowded villages, than among the 

 more scattered population. This is the more re- 

 markable since those persons whose modes of life 

 render them peculiarly susceptible to disease of 

 every kind are more frequently collected in the 

 larger towns and villages. But this epidemic 

 seemed scarcely to regard peculiar susceptibilities 

 of any kind. The man whose constitution was ex- 

 hausted by excesses, undoubtedly yielded more 

 readily if attacked, and fell a more certain victim, 

 than the man of temperate and regular habits. But 

 it does not appear that such were more frequently 

 attacked than others. On the contrary, the dis- 

 ease seemed rather to select the healthy and vigor- 

 ous. Although its range embraced persons in every 

 period of life, from childhood to old age, yet the 

 proportion of cases and of deaths was much greater 

 among adults of mature age, of firm health, and of 

 habits every way calculated to resist ordinary dis- 

 ease. 



Of the extent of the mortality produced by the 

 spotted fever, there are no means of obtaining ac- 

 curate knowledge. Except in the larger towns, no 

 returns are preserved of the number of deaths, or 

 their causes. There are, therefore, no data upon 

 which to found an estimate of the destruction of 

 life caused by this epidemic. It was, however, 

 very great, and from the character and relative sta- 

 tion of many of its victims, peculiarly afflicting. 

 The visitation, too, was sudden, and, therefore, 

 produced the greater alarm and distress. In some 

 instances, the disease visited a place twice, or even 

 three times. But, in general, its work was accom- 

 plished in a single visitation of a few weeks' dura- 

 tion. Dr Gallup remarks of the epidemic in Ver- 

 mont, that " There are but few towns whose 

 surviving inhabitants will not long, with grief, re- 

 member the winter of 1812 13, for the loss of 

 twenty, forty or eighty of their most valuable citi- 

 zens most valuable to society on account of their 

 being adult persons, and at the acme 'of human 

 life."* 



Of the causes of spotted fever, no satisfactory 

 account can be given. There was nothing in the 

 habits of the disease, or the manner in which it pro- 

 ceeded from place to place, to countenance the sup- 

 position of contagion; and such an opinion, we be- 

 lieve, has never been suggested. It is difficult to 

 reconcile the phenomena of this disease to any of 

 the other theories by which the progress of epide- 

 mics has been explained. If we attribute it to 

 some secret atmospheric influence, it is not easy to 

 account for the irregular and fitful manner in which 

 it lighted upon detached and distant places almost 

 at the same moment, while intermediate places 

 were passed by for the time, only to be the subjects 

 of a future visitation. It is still more improbable 

 that exhalations from the surface of the earth 

 could have been the cause, for the favourite season 

 of the disease was when the whole surface of the 

 earth was fast locked up by the frost. For a time, 

 many physicians were inclined to suppose that ergot 

 in the rye, which is much used in New England, 



* Epidemics of Vermont. 



