The following extracts from Short’s summation of parish registers show the great excess of burials over baptisms in various parts of England during the years of the aguish epidemic constitution.

Country Parishes.

Year Registers
examined		 Sickly
parishes		 Baptisms
in do.		 Burials
in do.
1678 136 17 312 527
1679 137 44 800 1203
1680 137 54 1093 1649
1681 137 41 679 1156
1682 140 30 632 975

Market Towns.

Year Registers
examined		 Sickly
parishes		 Baptisms
in do.		 Burials
in do.
1678 22 5 578 789
1679 23 7 877 1371
1680 24 7 946 1494
1681 24 9 945 1333
1682 25 9 795 1092
1683 25 8 1109 1398
1684 25 8 865 1243
1685 25 4 741 1191

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