72 FOTHERGILL'S MEDICAL PAPERS CHAP. 



immunity is no longer produced with any regularity, and so 

 the disorder is ever amongst us. 1 



WEATHER AND DISEASE 



Following Sydenham's endeavours to discover the relation 

 between weather and disease, Huxham, Fothergill, Cleghorn 

 and others sought by patient and continuous observations to 

 accumulate records upon which such relations could be 

 established. During four years, from 1751 to 1754, Fothergill 

 made observations in London of the barometer and ther- 

 mometer, the highest and lowest readings and daily range, 

 with the direction of the wind, the rain, etc., recording at the 

 same time the diseases which were prevalent. These records 

 he communicated anonymously once a month to the Gentle- 

 man's Magazine, in the hope of inciting others to the same 

 enquiry. A steady course of one kind of weather, and again, 

 quick transitions from one kind to another, might, he thought, 

 have an effect in promoting certain diseases. Moist and 

 moderately warm seasons were, according to his observation, 

 the least disposed to produce acute diseases. Some of his 

 incidental notes on current disorders are of interest, as for 

 example on an epidemic of jaundice in children, and on 

 inflammatory bowel disorders occasioned by eating great 

 quantities of walnuts, then very plentiful. Again he laments 

 the early treatment of slow fevers by bleeding, blistering and 

 sweating, so that the sufferers came enfeebled under the care 

 of the physician. 



Medical observers of the weather at this period did not 

 effect much beyond confirming Sydenham's conclusions as 

 to the prevalence of respiratory and digestive catarrhs at some 

 seasons of the year. Since FotherguTs time much more 



1 A Sketch of the Epidemic Disease, which appeared in London towards the 

 end of the year /77J, Med. Obs. & Inq. vi. 340 ; Works, iii. 251. A copy of 

 Fothergiil's circulated Sketch is in the MS. Linnean Correspondence, Linn. Soc. 

 The disorder was then known as the Epidemic Catarrh, or Febris Catarrhalis, 

 although the Italians had already called it Influenza from the supposed influence 

 of the heavenly bodies. Dr. T. Glass thought that the pestilence described 

 by Homer as spreading in 9 days through the camp of the Greeks and then 

 disappearing must have been Influenza. A prescription of Haygarth's may 

 amuse the learned reader : Tartar Emetic gr. \, zdis. horis ad sursum vel 

 deorsum purgandum. On the occurrence of the next epidemic in 1782 the 

 College of Physicians collected information from practitioners in the kingdom, 

 much as Fothergill had done, and an account of the disease was drawn up by 

 a committee of the college. See Med. Trans, iii. 54. Some curious notices 

 of outbreaks in France in 1733, 1737 and 1743 are to be found in Barbier, 

 Journals htstoriques et anecdotiques du regne de Louis XV. The disorder was 

 called " Rhume Epid6mique " and " Grippe." 



