[882] Early English Text Society’s edition by Skeat. Passus xvi. (108), and Passus vii.
[883] Trench, in his Select Glossary, has adopted the derivation of measles from misellus, without apparently knowing that John of Gaddesden had actually used “mesles” for a form of morbilli. The derivation of measles from misellus has been summarily rejected by Skeat, who thinks that “the spelling with the simple vowel e, instead of ae or ea, makes all the difference. The confusion between the words is probably quite modern.” Perhaps I ought not to contradict a philologist on his own ground; but there is no help for it. I know of four instances in which the simple vowel e is used in spelling the name of the disease that is associated with smallpox, the English equivalent of morbilli. In a letter of July 14, 1518, from Pace, dean of St Paul’s to Wolsey (Cal. State Papers, Henry VIII. II. pt. 1), it is said, “They do die in these parts [Wallingford] in every place, not only of the small pokkes and mezils, but also of the great sickness.” In the Description of the Pest by Dr Gilbert Skene, of Edinburgh (Edin. 1568, reprinted for the Bannatyne Club, 1840, p. 9), he mentions certain states of weather “quhilkis also signifeis the Pokis, Mesillis and siclik diseisis of bodie to follow.” And if a Scotsman’s usage be not admitted, an Oxonian, Cogan, says, “when the small pockes and mesels are rife,” and another Oxonian, Thomas Lodge, in his Treatise of the Plague (London, 1603, Cap. iii.) says: “When as Fevers are accompanied with Small Poxe, Mesels, with spots,” etc. On the other hand, Elyot, in the Castel of Health (1541), Phaer in the Book of Children, (1553), Clowes in his Proved Practice, and Kellwaye (1593) write the word with ea. There is, indeed, no uniformity, just as one might have expected in the sixteenth century. Again, Shakespeare (Coriolanus, Act III., scene I) spells the word with ea where it is clearly the same word that is used in The Vision of Piers the Ploughman in a generic sense and in the spelling of “meseles:”—“Those meazels which we disdain should tetter us.” Lastly, there are not two words in the Elizabethan dictionaries, one with e signifying lepers, and another with ea signifying the disease of morbilli. In Levins’ Manipulus Vocabulorum, we find “ye Maysilles” = variolae, but there is no word “mesles” = leprosi. There was only one word, with the usual varieties of spelling; and in course of time it came to be restricted in meaning to morbilli, Gaddesden’s early use of “mesles” in that sense having doubtless helped to determine the usage.
[884] Harl. MS., No. 2378. So far as I have observed, there is no prescription for “mesles,” or for smallpox under its Latin name or under any English name that might correspond thereto. Moulton’s This is The Myrror or Glasse of Helth (? 1540), which reproduces these medieval prescriptions with their headings, is equally silent about smallpox and measles.
[885] Willan’s Miscellaneous Works. “An Inquiry into the Antiquity of the Smallpox, Measles, and Scarlet Fever.” London, 1821, p. 98. The MS. is Harleian, No. 585.
[886] Sandoval, cited by Hecker, Der Englische Schweiss. Berlin, 1834, p. 80.
[887] MS. Harl., 1568.
[888] There is a fine copy of the earliest printed version in the British Museum, with “Sanctus Albanus” for colophon. The same text was reprinted often in the years following by London printers—in 1498, 1502, 1510, 1515 (twice), and 1528.
[889] Camden Society, ed. Gairdner, 1876, p. 87.
[890] Walsingham, Hist. Angliae, I. 299. Also Chronicon Angliae a quodam Monacho, sub anno 1362.
[891] “Also manie died of the smallpocks, both men, women and children.”