vii INFLUENZA 71 



Heberden, Pringle, Baker and Revell Reynolds in London, 

 by Cuming and Pulteney in the west, and by Ash of Birming- 

 ham, White of York, and Skene of Aberdeen amongst others. 

 A considerable body of evidence agreed as to the course of the 

 complaint ; its sudden onset, attacking first domestic servants, 

 and then often entire households ; the giddiness, headache 

 and other pains ; the acute catarrh of nose and throat, some- 

 times of digestive organs ; the fever and quick pulse ; the 

 frequent and teasing cough, often continuing after the other 

 symptoms had subsided ; the intermittent flushing and 

 sweats in some cases ; and the languor and mental depression 

 which followed, out of all proportion to the physical illness. 

 Some were able to keep about ; others were laid up for a few 

 days. A scarlet eruption, otalgia, and sloughs on the tonsils 

 occurred in a few cases. 



The distemper was remarkable for its suddenness and 

 universality. Thus Dr. Glass wrote that all the servants and 

 patients in the Devon and Exeter Hospital excepting two 

 children were seized within a week ; and few of the 200 

 inmates of the Exeter Workhouse escaped. At Chester it 

 was recorded by Dr. Haygarth that, in a street of affluent 

 residents, 73 out of 97 suffered ; in one of tradespeople, 109 

 out of 114 ; whilst the 175 occupants of the Home of Industry 

 were all affected. Many children were attacked, also old 

 people ; and to some of the very young, the old and the 

 weakly, it proved fatal ; otherwise the mortality was very 

 slight. 



The patients were treated with warmth, diluents, dia- 

 phoretics, purgatives and nutritious food. Some doctors 

 used bleeding ; Fothergill did so in sthenic cases ; others 

 thought this harmful. Bark was generally found useful in 

 the later stages. 



It was established in various places that horses and dogs 

 had suffered a few weeks earlier than men, and that a good 

 many dogs, after showing signs of giddiness, anorexia, fever 

 and paralysis of the hind legs, had died. Fothergill tried to 

 connect the outbreak with weather conditions, but with no 

 success, excepting that the disease appeared to be checked by 

 a sudden frost. 



These eighteenth-century epidemics of Influenza in England 

 were followed by a long pause, broken only by the slighter 

 outbreak of 1803, until the severe visitations of 1830 and 

 1847 ; after this again there was another almost entire cessa- 

 tion until 1889. At the latter epoch the relationship of 

 infective germ and host seems to have become altered, for 



