The Influenza of 1782.
Seven years after, in the early summer of 1782, there came another swift and brief wave of catarrhal fevers over England, Scotland and Ireland, in the midst of a great “constitution” of epidemic agues which continued for several years. This was the occasion when the Italian name of “influenza” was formally adopted by the College of Physicians. Perhaps the first appearance of the name in English was in an account of the epidemic in Italy in 1729, given by a London periodical devoted to political news from foreign countries, and called, “The Political State of Great Britain[659].” In 1743 the news of the Italian epidemic under its native name reached London before the infection itself, the Italian name being frequently given to it while it lasted that season in England. When the next epidemic came, in 1762, it was not called the influenza as a matter of course, but was compared to the disease in 1743 “called the influenza.” In the epidemic of 1775, “influenza” came more into use, and in 1782 it was the name usually given to the epidemic malady. The adoption of this name put an end at length to the ambiguity between epidemic agues and influenzas, leaving the curious correspondences between them in time and place, or the nosological affinities between them, as interesting as ever.
As late as the very fatal aguish years 1727-29, there was no clear separation of the epidemic agues from the influenzas, of which latter there were two or more, the one in the end of 1729 being easy to identify. In the great aguish constitution of 1678-81, Sydenham distinguished the epidemic coughs and catarrhs in Nov. 1679; but Morley made no such distinction, describing the whole series of agues for two seasons (and he might have done so for two seasons more) as the “new fever,” “new ague,” or “new delight,” as in Derbyshire, without a suspicion that the universal coughs, catarrhs and fevers in November, 1679, were something nosologically distinct, which the future would identify as “influenza.” In like manner Whitmore, in the great aguish period immediately preceding, that of 1658-59, had described the “new disease” as one single Proteus. In the still earlier epidemic seasons of 1557-58 and 1580-82, everything was “ague,” although we now discover influenza mixed therewith. I do not say that this inclusive naming was the better scientifically; nor do I uphold Willis and Sydenham in their teaching that the intermittent constitution passed into the catarrhal, in 1658 and 1679 respectively. But it is necessary to bear in mind the matter of fact, namely, that those agues, amidst which the “great colds” occurred, were epidemic agues, and not the endemic fevers of malarious places; and I have now to show that the “influenza” of 1782 was in like manner a brief episode in the midst of several successive seasons of agues, which were as much “new” or “strange” as any of those in the earlier history. Whether the epidemic agues of 1780-85 were the last of the kind in Britain had better be left an open question until our most recent and most strange experiences in 1890-93 are read in the light of history.
The influenza of 1782 was a very definite incident of a few weeks—teres atque rotundus. It is easily discoverable in the weekly bills of mortality in London to have fallen in the month of June:
London Weekly Mortalities.
1782
| Week ending | Fevers | All causes | |||
| May | 21 | 45 | 336 | ||
| 28 | 49 | 390 | |||
| June | 4 | 57 | 385 | ||
| 11 | 121 | 560 | |||
| 18 | 110 | 473 | |||
| 25 | 89 | 434 | |||
| July | 2 | 49 | 296 | ||
The sudden rise and fall of the deaths and the height reached are much the same as in other such epidemics in the summer—the “gentle correction” of 1580, the “transient slight fever” of 1688, and the epidemic catarrh of 1762. On the other hand the epidemics of autumn, winter or spring in 1729, 1733, 1737 and 1743 were far more severe, while the winter epidemics of 1675 and 1679 had figures almost the same as the summer epidemics.
The influenza of 1782 was not remarkable, whether in its fatality or in its characters; but it received far more attention than any that had preceded it. Two collective inquiries were held upon it, one by a Society for promoting Medical Knowledge[660], the other by a committee of the College of Physicians of London[661], many physicians all over England, Scotland and Ireland contributing to one or other. There were also three or more separate essays[662].
The epidemic appeared in 1782 at Newcastle in the end of April, and raged there all May and part of June. In London it appeared between the 12th and 18th of May, in the Eastern Counties about the middle of May, in Surrey and at Portsmouth, Oxford and Edinburgh, also about the third week of May, but not in Musselburgh until the 9th or 10th of June. It was at Chester on the 26th of May, at Plymouth on the 30th, at Ipswich, Yarmouth, York, Liverpool and Glasgow in the first week of June. In Northumberland it was raging in July, and did not cease until the third week of August. In Scotland it was at a height in July, during the haymaking[663]. The most curious fact in its incidence comes from North Devon; it was prevalent in Barnstaple at the usual time, the month of June; but the neighbouring town of Torrington was not then affected by it, having previously gone through the epidemic, it is said, from a date as early as the 24th of March[664]. In all places it spread quickly, affecting from three-fourths to four-fifths of the adult inhabitants, but children not so much. At Christ’s Hospital, London, only fourteen out of seven hundred boys had it. Wherever it attacked children, it did so mildly. It lasted under six weeks in each place that it came to. There were some strange attacks of it in London in September, “two months after the late epidemical catarrh had entirely disappeared from England.” The king’s ships ‘Convert’ and ‘Lizard’ arrived in the Thames from the West Indies in September. Their crews were perfectly healthy till they reached Gravesend, where they took on board three custom-house officers; and in a very few hours after that the influenza began to make its appearance. Hardly a man in either ship escaped it; and many both of the officers and common seamen had it in a severe degree[665]. Others who came to London from the West Indies in merchantmen in the end of September were attacked by influenza in their lodgings in the beginning of October[666]. To this epidemic belong also the strange experiences of the Channel Fleet in its two divisions under Howe and Kempenfelt; but I postpone for the present the whole question of influenza at sea.