The Influenza of 1688.

The seasons continued, according to Sydenham, to produce epidemic agues until 1685, when the constitution radically changed to one of pestilential fevers, affecting many in all ranks of society and reaching a height in 1686. Sydenham records nothing beyond that date, having shortly after fallen into ill health and ceased to write or even to practise. One would wish to have known what he made of the “new distemper” in the summer of 1688, for it was a sudden universal fever, and yet not a catarrh or a “great cold.” It is thus referred to in a letter of the month of June, from Belvoir, Rutlandshire[601]: “The man that dos the picturs in inemaled is gon up to London for a weke.... I wish the man dos not get this new distemper and die before he comes agane.” On turning to the London weekly bills of mortality we find in the first weeks of June the characteristic rise of one of those sudden epidemic fevers or new diseases, of which the earliest with recorded figures was the “gentle correction” of July, 1580. The following are the weekly London figures corresponding to the “new distemper” of 1688:

Weekly London Mortalities.

1688

Week
ending		 Fevers All causes
May29 58 368
June 5 76 518
12 101 559
19 65 435
26 66 437

The contemporary London notice of this “influenza” comes from Dr Walter Harris, who mentioned it in a book written the year after[602]:

“From the middle of the month of May in the year 1688, for some weeks, a slight sort of fever became epidemical. It affected the joints of the patients with slight pains, and they complained of a pain in their heads, especially in the fore-part, and of a sort of giddiness. It was more rife than any that I ever observed before, from any cause whatsoever, or in any time of the year. A great many whole families were taken at once with this fever, so that hardly one out of a great number escaped this general storm. Now this so epidemical or febrile insult seemed plainly to me to depend upon the variety of the season of the year, the most intense heat of some days being suddenly changed to cold.... Never were so many people sick together: never did so few of them die. They recovered under almost any regimen,—almost everyone of them.”

It will be seen, however, that the bills rose very considerably for four weeks, and that, too, in the healthiest season of the year.

A somewhat fuller account of its symptoms is given by Molyneux for Dublin[603]. He had been informed by a learned physician from London that it had been as general there as in Dublin, which we know to have been the case from Harris’s account. Both Molyneux and Harris call it a slight fever, without mentioning catarrhal symptoms. The spring months immediately preceding had been remarkable for drought.

At Dublin this “short sort of fever” was first observed about the beginning of July, or some six weeks later than in London. “It so universally seized all sorts of men whatever, that I then made an estimate not above one in fifteen escaped. It began, as generally fevers do, with a chilness and shivering all over, like that of an ague, but not so violent, which soon broke out into a dry burning heat, with great uneasiness that commonly confined them to their beds, where they passed the ensuing night very restless; they commonly complained likewise of giddiness, and a dull pain in their heads, chiefly about the eyes, with unsettled pains in their limbs, and about the small of their back, a soreness all over their flesh, a loss of appetite, with a nausea or aptness to vomit, an unusual ill taste in their mouths, yet little or no thirst. And though these symptoms were very violent for a time, yet they did not continue long: for after the second day of the distemper the patient, usually of himself, fell into a sweat (unless ’twas prevented by letting blood, which, however beneficial in other fevers, I found manifestly retarded the progress of this): and if the sweat was encouraged for five or six hours by laying on more cloaths, or taking some sudorifick medicine, most of the disorders before mentioned would entirely disappear or at least very much abate. The giddiness of their head and want of appetite would often continue some days afterwards, but with the use of the open fresh air they certainly in four or five days at farthest recovered these likewise and were perfectly well. So transient and favourable was this disease that it seldom required the help of a physician; and of a thousand that were seized with it, I believe scarce one dyed. By the middle of August following, it wholly disappeared, so that it had run its full course through all sorts of people in seven weeks time.... This fever spread itself all over England; whether it extended farther I did not learn.”

This short fever of men was preceded by a slight but universal horse-cold[604].