Besides smallpox, diarrhoeas and dysenteries in the autumn are given by Wintringham as the reigning maladies, fever not being mentioned.
The Epidemic Fevers of 1726-29: evidence of Relapsing Fever.
The four years 1726-29 were a great fever-period in London, the deaths having been as follows:
| Year | Fever deaths | All deaths | ||
| 1726 | 4666 | 29,647 | ||
| 1727 | 4728 | 28,418 | ||
| 1728 | 4716 | 27,810 | ||
| 1729 | 5335 | 29,722 |
In the last of those years the entry in the annual bills becomes “fever, malignant fever, spotted fever and purples.”
The following are the weekly maxima of fever deaths and deaths from all causes during the four years, 1726-29; in nearly all the weeks the deaths from “convulsions” (generic name for most of the maladies of infants) contribute from a fourth to a third, or even more, of the whole mortality.
| Week ending | Fever deaths | All deaths | |||||
| 1726 | |||||||
| Jan. | 18 | 71 | 633 | ||||
| March | 15 | 81 | 678 | ||||
| May | 31 | 103 | 611 | ||||
| June | 7 | 106 | 607 | ||||
| Aug. | 30 | 102 | 711 | ||||
| Sept. | 6 | 116 | 680 | ||||
| 13 | 109 | 643 | |||||
| 20 | 109 | 648 | |||||
| 1727 | |||||||
| Aug. | 8 | 103 | 577 | ||||
| 15 | 123 | 698 | |||||
| 22 | 132 | 730 | |||||
| 29 | 130 | 789 | |||||
| Sept. | 5 | 150 | 764 | ||||
| 12 | 134 | 795 | |||||
| 19 | 165 | 798 | |||||
| 26 | 163 | 715 | |||||
| Oct. | 3 | 150 | 684 | ||||
| 1728 | |||||||
| Feb. | 6 | 112 | 748 | ||||
| 13 | 131 | 889 | |||||
| 20 | 121 | 850 | |||||
| 27 | 145 | 927 | |||||
| March | 5 | 93 | 733 | ||||
| Aug. | 27 | 138 | 525 | ||||
| Sept. | 3 | 131 | 562 | ||||
| Dec. | 10 | 122 | 734 | ||||
| 1729 | |||||||
| Sept. | 9 | 109 | 676 | ||||
| Nov. | 4 | 213 | 908[104] | ||||
| 11 | 267 | 993[104] | |||||
| 8 | 166 | 783 | |||||
| Dec. | 9 | 132 | 779 | ||||
These are high mortalities, whatever were the types of fever that caused them. That the old pestilential fever of London was one of them we need have no doubt. Dr John Arbuthnot, writing two or three years after, said, “I believe one may safely affirm that there is hardly any year in which there are not in London fevers with buboes and carbuncles [the distinctive pestilential marks]; and that there are many petechial or spotted fevers is certain[105].”
The essay of Strother also has a reference to “spotted fever” in its title, although the text throws very little light upon it[106]. But, for the rest, the “constitution” of 1727-29 is more than usually perplexing. There was an influenza at the end of 1729, which can be separated from the rest easily enough by the help of the London weekly bills of mortality; and it is probable, unless Arbuthnot, Huxham and Rutty have erred in their dates, that one or more epidemics of catarrhal fever had occurred before that, in the years 1727 and 1728. The greatest difficulty is with a certain “little fever,” or “hysteric fever,” or “febricula,” which gave rise to some writing and a good deal of talk. Strother does not specially treat of it, at least under that name, although he says that “many, especially women, have been subject to fits of vapours, cold sweats, apprehensions, and unaccountable fears of death; every small disappointment dejected them, tremblings and weakness attended them,” etc. (p. 116); and again, “never was a season when apoplexies, palsies and other obstructions of the nerves did prevail so much as they do at present, and have done for some time past” (p. 102); while he had frequently seen hysterical and hypochondriacal symptoms, dejection of spirits and the like remaining behind the fever (p. 109). For some years before this, much had been heard in London of the vapours, the “hypo,” the spleen, and the like, an essay by Dr Mandeville, better known by his ‘Fable of the Bees,’ having first made these maladies fashionable in the year 1711[107].
In due time it began to be noticed that symptoms which many physicians made light of as a “fit of vapours” were really the beginning of a fever. Dr Blackmore, in an essay on the Plague written in 1721, admitted the ambiguity: