MALARIA IN GREAT BRITAIN 133 



Eighteenth Century ' shows what a part it played in 

 the life of the Scottish peasant : 



'The one ailment to which they were most hable, and in 

 which dirt had no share, was ague. This was due to the 

 undrained land, which retained wet like a sponge, and was full 

 of swamps and bogs and morasses in which " green grew the 

 rushes." Terribly prevalent and harassing this malady proved 

 to the rural classes, for every year a vast proportion of the 

 people were prostrated by it, so that it was often extremely 

 difficult to get the necessary work of the fields performed in 

 many districts. In localities like the Carse of Gowrie, which 

 in those days abounded in morasses and deep pools, amongst 

 whose rushes the lapwings had their haunt, the whole popula- 

 tion was every year stricken more or less with the trouble, 

 until the days came when drainage dried the soil, and ague 

 and lapwings disappeared.' 



In England it was once very prevalent. James I. 

 died of ' a tertian ague ' at Theobalds, near London, 

 and Cromwell succumbed at Whitehall to a ' bastard 

 tertian ague' in 1658, a year in which malaria was 

 very widely spread and very malignant ; and it is 

 only within recent memory that the fen districts in 

 Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire, Romney Marsh in 

 Kent, and the marshy districts of Somerset, have lost 

 their evil reputation for ague. The older chemists in 

 the towns in the fen districts still recall the lucrative 

 trade their fathers carried on in opium and prepara- 

 tions of quinine with the fenmen during the first half 

 of last century ; but with the improved drainage of 

 the fens this has all disappeared, and at present cases 

 of endemic malaria appear to be unknown in England, 

 though sporadic cases turn up at rare intervals. It 

 was also very prevalent along the estuary of the 

 Thames, both on the Essex and Kentish marshes. 

 Pip in ' Great Expectations ' says to his convict : 



' " I think you have got the ague." " I'm much of your opinion, 

 boy," said he. " It's bad about here," I told him. " You've been 

 lying out on the meshes, and they're dreadful aguish." ' 



