A History of Epidemics in Britain, Volume 1 (of 2) / From A.D. 664 to the Extinction of Plague
London: C. J. CLAY and SONS, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, AND H. K. LEWIS, 136, GOWER STREET, W.C.
Cambridge: DEIGHTON, BELL AND CO. Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS. New York: MACMILLAN AND CO.
A HISTORY
EPIDEMICS IN BRITAIN
from A.D. 664 to the Extinction of Plague
BY CHARLES CREIGHTON, M.A., M.D., FORMERLY DEMONSTRATOR OF ANATOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.
CAMBRIDGE: AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 1891
Cambridge: PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
The title and contents-table of this volume will show sufficiently its scope, and a glance at the references in the several chapters will show its sources. But it may be convenient to premise a few general remarks under each of those heads. The date 664 A.D. has been chosen as a starting-point, for the reason that it is the year of the first pestilence in Britain recorded on contemporary or almost contemporary authority, that of Beda’s ‘Ecclesiastical History.’ The other limit of the volume, the extinction of plague in 1665-66, marks the end of a long era of epidemic sickness, which differed much in character from the era next following. At or near the Restoration we come, as it were, to the opening of a new seal or the outpouring of another vial. The history proceeds thenceforth on other lines and comes largely from sources of another kind; allowing for a little overlapping about the middle of the seventeenth century, it might be continued from 1666 almost without reference to what had gone before. The history is confined to Great Britain and Ireland, except in Chapter XI. which is occupied with the first Colonies and the early voyages, excepting also certain sections of other chapters, where the history has to trace the antecedents of some great epidemic sickness on a foreign soil.
The sources of the work have been the ordinary first-hand sources of English history in general. In the medieval period these include the monastic histories, chronicles, lives, or the like (partly in the editions of Gale, Savile, Twysden, and Hearne, and of the English Historical Society, but chiefly in the great series edited for the Master of the Rolls), the older printed collections of State documents, and, for the Black Death, the recently published researches upon the rolls of manor courts and upon other records. From near the beginning of the Tudor period, the Calendars of State Papers (Domestic, Foreign, and Colonial), become an invaluable source of information for the epidemiologist just as for other historians. Also the Reports of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, together with its Calendars of private collections of papers, have yielded a good many facts. Many exact data, relating more particularly to local outbreaks of plague, have been found in the county, borough, and parish histories, which are of very unequal value for the purpose and are often sadly to seek in the matter of an index. The miscellaneous sources drawn upon have been very numerous, perhaps more numerous, from the nature of the subject, than in most other branches of history.
Charles Creighton
A HISTORY OF EPIDEMICS IN BRITAIN.
PREFACE.
CONTENTS.
ERRATA.
Pestilence in England and Ireland in the Seventh Century.
Early Epidemics not connected with Famine.
Medieval Famine-pestilences.
Epidemics of St Anthony’s Fire, or Ergotism.
Generalities on Medieval Famines in England.
Leprosy in Medieval Medical Treatises.
The Biblical Associations of Leprosy.
The Medieval Religious Sentiment towards Lepers.
The English Leper-houses.
Leper-houses in Scotland and Ireland.
The Prejudice against Lepers.
Laws against Lepers.
Causes of Medieval Leprosy.
Symptoms and Type of the Black Death.
Estimates of the Mortality.
The Antecedents of the Black Death.
The Theory of the Plague-Virus.
The Theory tested by Modern Instances.
Relation of Typhus to Bubo-plague.
Direct effects of the Black Death.
More lasting effects on Farming, Industries, and Population.
The Epidemics following the Black Death.
Medical Evidence of the Continuance of Plague.
The Fourteenth Century Chronology continued.
The Public Health in the Fifteenth Century.
Chronology of Plagues in the Fifteenth Century.
Plague and other pestilences in Scotland and Ireland, 1349-1475.
The Second Sweat in 1508.
The Third Sweat in 1517.
The Fourth Sweat in 1528.
The Fifth Sweat in 1551.
Antecedents of the English Sweat.
A form of Sweat afterwards endemic in Normandy.
Theory of the English Sweat.
The Habitat of the Virus.
The Extinction of the Sweat in England.
The London Plague of 1563.
Preventive Practice in Plague-time under the Tudors.
Sanitation in Plantagenet and Tudor times.
The Disposal of the Dead.
Chronology of Plague, 1564-1592.
The London Plague of 1592-1593.
Plague in Scotland, 1495-1603.
Plague in Ireland in the Tudor period.
Cambridge Black Assizes.
Oxford Black Assizes.
Exeter Black Assizes.
Poverty and Vagrancy in Tudor England.
Influenza.
Earliest Notices of the French Pox in Scotland and England.
English Writings on the Pox in the 16th Century.
Origin of the Epidemic of 1494.
Smallpox in the Arabic Annals.
Theory of the nature of Smallpox.
European Smallpox in the Middle Ages.
Measles in Medieval Writings.
History of the name “Pocks” in English.
Smallpox in England in the 16th Century.
Smallpox in the 17th Century.
Smallpox in Continental Writings of the 16th century.
The London Plague of 1603.
The Plague of 1603 in the country near London.
Annual Plague in London after 1603.
Plague in the Provinces in 1603 and following years.
Ireland.
Plague in Scotland, 1603-24.
Malignant Fever preceding the Plague of 1625.
The London Plague of 1625.
The Plague of 1625 near London.
Plague in the Provinces in 1625 and following years.
The London Plague of 1636.
Fever in London.
Review of Fever in England to 1643.
War-typhus in Oxfordshire and Berkshire.
War-typhus at Tiverton in 1644.
Plague in the Provinces during the Civil Wars.
Plague in Scotland during the Civil Wars.
Fever in England, 1651-2.
Fever and Influenza, 1657-9.
(Sea Scurvy, Flux, Fever, and Yellow Fever.)
The first accounts of Sea Scurvy.
Remarkable Epidemic in Drake’s Fleet 1585-6.
Sicknesses of Voyages, continued: Management of Scurvy.
Scurvy in the East India Company’s Ships: Professional Treatment.
Sickness in the Colonizing of Virginia and New England.
West Indian Colonization: Yellow Fever and the Slave Trade.
The Great Mortality in the occupying of Jamaica.
Literature of the Great Plague.
Antecedents, Beginnings and Progress of the Plague of 1665.
Mortality and Incidents of the Great Plague.
Plague near London in 1665.
Plague in the Provinces in 1665-6.
The Epidemic of Plague at Eyam, 1665-6.
The Last of Plague in England.
INDEX.
