Show GREAT EPIDEMICS IN GREAT BRITAIN j n I Awful Ravages Wrought Sickness B > the Long Black Ago Death and Sweating I The rapid spread of the yellow fever among the troops at Santiago recalls I what plagues have swept London and Great Britain in times long past A I Dundee Scotland writer says To he sure no epidemic of recent I I years has attained anything like the severity se-verity or produced the widespread desolation des-olation and death of the visitations of former times Yet the icpeated waves I of influenza that have visited British shores during the last few years in the I aggregate have produced a serious loss of life and an incalculable amount of deterioration in the health of the country i coun-try In four years 125000 lives have been lost in England and Wales alone I through influenza Yet we should be thankful that improved sanitation enlightened en-lightened city and rural government and advanced scientific knowledge have saved us from any pestilence comr > arable ar-able in severity to the terrible vlsita < ticns of black death sweating sickness i or plague which formerly raged allover j over the land and vrought tearful havoc among the people of Britain The black death raged for nearly 501 years during the fourteenth century in various parts of Europe From 1334 to j I 1380 i traveled in unchcked progress through China Western Asia and Af inca i i-nca to Europe and even Iceland ad Greenland Wherever it appeared it j did not leave till it had marked its cruel i course with hundreds ol thousands of < victims j I I c arrived in England in 1349 and I I raged all ovtr the country for nearly I i al o1r I six months In London 100000 persons per-sons died in other parts of the country I coun-try the mortality was eaually appalling appall-ing A register in the abbey of Gloucester Glou-cester says that twothirds U of the i people died The rich people fled from the land the poor people died off in i crowds The land was untilled trade j and commerce almost ceased So seriously seri-ously was the royal treasury affected by the flight of the richer people and the povertystricken Condition of the I lower classes that King Edward IIi j I issued an order to the mayors and bailiffs of ports that cnly merchants and messengers were to be allowed togo to-go abroad The demands of the few i > laborers left for exorbitant wages and I the frequent quarrels hetween masters and men led to the interference of parliament I I par-liament and the passing of the famous t statute of laborers fixing a scale of j wages to which adherence was enforced en-forced under penalty of the stocks I At Yarmouth 7000 persons died in j Bristol the living were scarce able ito i-to ljury the dead in Norwich 57374 persons besides religious and beggars I beg-gars died i Scotland long escaped the pestilence some charm seemed to prevent the infection I in-fection crossing the border But at last the plague descended with awful violence I vio-lence upon a camp of Scotch marauders near Selkirk 5000 of them died and 1 the rest escaped carrying the seeds of infection all over their native la dIn d-In Europe it is said on a moderate computation the black death claimed 25000000 victims The disease generally appeared in the illfated sufferer a boils in the armpits arm-pits and groins and later all over the body wit rapidly putrifymg black spots Stupor decompositon of the tongue and the lungs rapidly supervened superven-ed and the patient died in from three hours to as many days A remedy suggested in coldblooded I selfishness by Bernarts in 1379 led to I improvement and final extinction of the extncton plague He advised that every patient I should be immediately removed out into i in-to the open fields and left to live or die and that the attendants on the sick be j isolated for ten days This plan was adopted and ultimately lazarettos the equivalent of our modern Isolation hospitals I hos-pitals were erected and this step was quickly followed by a notable improvement I improve-ment in public health The Sweating Sickness first showed itself in 1485 among Henry Tudors soldiers sol-diers after his landing at Milford Haven Ha-ven In August September and October Octo-ber of that year i prevailed in London then it departed to return again in 1503 For ten years afterward it was not known but unfortunately its long absence ab-sence was compensated for by the terrible ter-rible severity with which it raged In 1517 In that year many victims died in a few hours and it devastated equally equal-ly the palaces of the rich and the cottages cot-tages of the poor Lord Bacon in his History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh says regarding this third and most severe se-vere epidemic About this time in autumn toward the end of September there began and reigned in the city and other parts ot the kingdom a disease then new which by the accidents and manner thereof they called the sweating sweat-ing sickness This disease had a swift course both in the sick body and in the time and period of the lasting thereof for they that were taken with i upon four and twenty hours escaping were thought almost assured I was a pestilential fever but as it seemeth not seated in the veins of humors hu-mors for that there followed no carbuncle car-buncle no purple or livid spots or the like the mass of the body not being tainted only a malign vapor flew to the heart and seized the vital spirits which stirred nature to strive to send it forth by an extreme sweat The victims were generally men in the prime of life who were seized suddenly sud-denly with a sweating accompanied with faintness and drowsiness Those who had eaten heartily shortly before the seizure died immediately others yielding to the irresistible inclination to sleep awoke only to die Of seven citizens of London who one evening supped together six died before morning morn-ing In one week 800 men died in the metropolis The treatment of the disease whicn was eventually successfully adopted was that advised by Caius a lead ing physician of the time who wrote a Boke of Counseill against the Disease Dis-ease commonly called the Sweate or Seat ng Sickness 1552 His directions direc-tions might be summed up in two essentials es-sentials to facilitate the sweat and to avoid chills He declares that the cause of the epidemic was the soil diet of his countrymen Those who had the disease sore with peril of death were he says men of wealth ease and welfare wel-fare or if the poorer sort such us were idle persons good ale drinkers and tavern huntersthe laborious and thin dieted escaped Grafton in his Chronicles Chron-icles says All in maner as sone as the sweate took them or within a short space after yielded up theyr ghost So that of all of them that sickened there was not one amongst a hundredth that escaped There can be no doubt that the mortality for several months was frightful but fortunately before the end of the sixteenth century the Ephemera Eph-emera or sweating sickness left Brit ish shores for good The socalled Great Plague of London Lon-don began its ravages in December 1664 The disease called Plague or Pest had long ben known as a terribly fatal malady wherever it appeared The earliest ear-liest notice of it appears in a work o Olibasius the physician to the Emperor Julian A D 361363 who quotes from one earlier writer to show that the dis east had ben known a an epidemic and occasionally epidemic one in North Africa and Syria from the beginning of the second century before Christ Centuries of civilization and scientific progress have not served to rid the world absolutely of thC fatal scourge for even within the last 20 years occasional occa-sional outbreaks have occurred in Persian I Per-sian Kurdistan and Western Arabia From the year 430 to the terrible lIme of1665 the plague at intervals vis ted the shores Britain In 1625 35417 I persons died of the disease In London ind during the following years great ictivity was manifested by the privy ouncil and the college of physicians to J I irevent any further outbreak In 1633 he doctors I issued a renorl uLtbx r hf I mendations from which even in modern I days many towns might take hints with advantage to the public health The report states that the sewers and ditches were not properly cleansed Ponds which should have been filled up were left to collect refuse The streets were not swpet as they should be Corn meat and fish unfit for consumption I con-sumption were old to the poor I Throughout the various epidemics I there was a close similarity in the symptoms which manifested themselves them-selves In the fated Individual He was first conscious of great weariness and langour confusion of ideas and giddiness i giddi-ness upon which stupor and delirium I rapidly supervened Darting pains were felt in the groins and armpits and swellings formed in the lymphatic glands and carbuncles all over the body From two to six days sufficed to exhaust the vitality of the healthiest and strongest S The great plague of London took its origin from a very simple incident A bale of goods imported from Holland which had come from the Levant carried car-ried the seeds of death to a house in Long Acre near the end of Drury Lane Four persons in that house soon succumbed suc-cumbed to the fell disease and a visitor vis-itor to one of these earlier victims carried car-ried the infection to her own house aid she with all her household died and a minister of religion who visited her during her brief illness also feLl a victim vic-tim a few days afterwards By this time the germs of the terrible scourge had had ample opportunity to multiply and they were soon sown broadcast over the illfated city In Pepys Diary we have some glimpses of the horrors of the time On April 30 he writes Great fears of sickness sick-ness here in the city it being said that two or three houses are already shut I up God preserve us a1 And later I he writes Lord how everybodys look and discourse in the streets is of death and nothing else and few people going up and down that the town is like a place distressed and forsaken The desperation of a terrible despair soon seized the stricken people for death was everywhere throughout the city the king had lied with his court to Salisbury a strict cordon was drawn round the city and no inhabitant dared to break through the barrier that shutout shut-out the plague from the rest of the country but shut in the inhabitants of the capital with disease and death A red cross and the words Lord have mercy upon us were branded on the door of every infected house At night carts went round and collected the dead bodies without reference to sex or age or station and they were tossed one after another into yawning yawn-ing pits without any attempt even at decent burial or funeral rites Trade was at a standstill and the scarcity of provisions soon added another horror hor-ror to the situation Tears and lamentations says De foe were seen in almost every house especially in the first part of the visitation visita-tion for toward the latter end mens hearts were hardened and death wa so always before their eyes that they did not so much concern themselves for the loss of their friends expecting that ehemselves should be summoned in the next hour In one week 10000 persons died and for a long time the weekly death total was over 5000 During August and September the epidemic was at its height but as colder weather came the death rate rapidly declined Whether much of the I declned improvements was due to the efforts I of the city officials and college of physicians I phy-sicians is doubtful The plague hid I spent itself and by the end of March 1666 it was almost extinct I was along j a-long time however before London re i covered from theterrlble havoc of that sadlymemorable great plague I |