The universal cold or catarrh of 1729 fell upon London in October and November, and upon York, Plymouth and Dublin about the same time. It prevailed in various parts of Europe until March, 1730, its incidence upon Italy being entirely after the New Year. The rise in the London deaths was characteristic: the level was high when the epidemic began, but the epidemic nearly doubled the already high mortality during the worst week and trebled the deaths from “fever.”

London Weekly Mortalities.

1729

Week ending Fever All causes
October21 88 564
28 118 603
November 4 213 908
11 267 993
18 166 783
25 124 635

The high mortalities of the weeks following may be taken as due to the sequelae of the epidemic (pneumonias, pleurisies, malignant fevers) and are indeed so explained in one contemporary account:

Week ending Fever All causes
December2 92 678
9 132 779
16 116 707
23 123 710
30 109 628

The influenza of October and November, 1729, was the occasion of a London essay[617], which appears to treat solely of the epidemic catarrh and its after-effects, and not of the two years’ previous sicknesses, which are the subject of another essay, by Strother, written before the influenza began. London, says this author, as well as Bath, and foreign parts, have been on a sudden seized universally with the disorders named in his title (fevers, coughs, asthmas, rheumatisms, defluxions etc.). These had come in the course of an unusually warm and wet, or relaxing, winter; “we have for some time past dwelt in fogs, our air has been hazy, our streets loaden with rain, and our bodies surrounded with water.” So many different symptoms attend the “New Disease” that a volume, he says, would not suffice to describe them, but he thus summarizes them:

Sudden pain in the head, heaviness or drowsiness, and anon their noses began to run; they coughed or wheezed, and grew hoarse; they felt an oppression and load on their breasts, and turned vapourish, either because they apprehended ill consequences, or because their spirits were oppressed with a load of humours. The victims of the epidemic, he says again, were very subject to vapours; they are, upon the least fatigue or emotion of mind, dispirited, and flag upon every emergency. Among other symptoms were, quick pulse, thirst, loss of appetite and vertigo: the mouth and jaws hot, rough and dry, the thrush raising blisters thereon; the throat hoarse; a fierce brutal cough, which weakens by bringing on profuse sweats; the urine, muddy and white, “if they who are seized have been old asthmaticks.”

He speaks of cases that had proved suddenly fatal and says that all who died of “epidemical catarrhs” had been found to have polypuses in their hearts. If reference be made to the Table, it will be seen that the high mortality continued in London for at least a month after the epidemic had passed through its ordinary course of rise, maximum and decline; and it is probably to that post-epidemic mortality that the author refers in the following passages:

“Numbers, as appears by our late bills, are taken with malignant fevers, or malignant pleurisies or with pleuritic fevers.... Whosoever, then, would prevent a defluxion from turning into a fever, or from anything yet worse, if worse can be, must keep warm and observe a diluting regimen so long as till their water subsides and the symptoms are vanquished.... I am convinced by experience that many poor creatures have perished under these late epidemical fevers, from the fatal mistake of never retiring from their usual employments till they have rivetted a fever upon them, and till they have neglected twelve or fourteen days of their precious time.” This was fully endorsed by Huxham for the influenza of 1733: “Morbus raro lethalis, quem tamen, multi, vel ob ipsam frequentiam, temeri spernentes, seras dedêre poenas stultitiae, asthmatici, hectici, tabidi.”