A History of Epidemics in Britain, Volume 2 (of 2) / From the Extinction of Plague to the Present Time

by Charles Creighton

Whatever may have been the reason of their saying so little of infantile diarrhoea, its great frequency or fatality in London in the end of the 17th century rests upon the explicit testimony of Doctor Walter Harris, in his book on the Acute Diseases of Infants, written in 1689[1392]: “From the middle of July to the middle of September these epidemic gripes of infants are so common (being the annual heat of the season doth entirely exhaust their strength) that more infants, affected with these, do die in one month than in other three that are gentle.” It was probably this remarkable fatality of the summer diarrhoea of infants that led Sydenham to say that the cholera morbus of August differed toto caelo from the disease with the same symptoms at any other time of the year[1393].

The summer of 1669 was excessively hot; it was a season of enormous mortality from fevers in Holland, of a type very difficult to understand, and in New England it was remarkable for fluxes, agues and other fevers. In that summer, as well as in the following, Sydenham lays stress upon the amount of choleraic and dysenteric sickness, without saying that it was specially fatal to children. The following Tables, compiled from the weekly bills of the Parish Clerks for each of the two summers, show the enormous rise of the total deaths in August and September, “griping in the guts” accounting for almost the whole of the increase.

Weekly Mortalities supposed of Infantile Diarrhoea in London.

Summer and Autumn of 1669

Week ending			Convulsions		Griping in the guts		All causes
June	29		30		42		283
July	6		49		74		365
	13		48		105		391
	20		53		119		389
	27		36		122		368
Aug.	3		28		96		340
	10		22		129		437
	17		43		173		510
	24		31		182		482
	31		42		269		665
Sept.	7		45		318		707
	14		34		277		619
	21		33		231		524
	28		29		232		570
Oct.	5		38		185		553
	12		30		172		518
	19		25		156		473
	26		16		146		421
Nov.	2		14		89		372

Summer and Autumn of 1670

Week ending			Convulsions		Griping in the guts		All causes
July	5		37		41		318
	12		40		51		320
	19		43		76		351
	26		40		77		372
Aug.	2		49		113		470
	9		38		160		485
	16		44		189		555
	23		47		222		629
	30		42		250		629
Sept.	6		31		253		617
	13		24		239		586
	20		38		225		575
	27		27		150		474
Oct.	4		16		130		401
	11		13		104		376
	18		17		78		325
	25		15		75		336
Nov.	1		19		46		283

These are the characteristic London bills of a hot autumn; they recur sometimes two or three years in succession, and on an average perhaps once or twice in a decennium. Any year with an unusually high total of deaths from all causes is almost certain to show a large part of its excess of deaths in the weekly bills of summer and autumn. The proof that these enormous weekly totals under the head of “griping in the guts” were infantile deaths lies in the fact that they were gradually transferred to “convulsions,” as will appear in the tables of future autumnal epidemics showing the transference half made and wholly made. The transference to “convulsions” was almost complete before the year 1728, when the ages at deaths from all causes were first published in the weekly bills. After that year it is obvious that any excessive mortality of the six or eight hot weeks of late summer or autumn corresponds to a great increase of the deaths under two years, which is also the increase of deaths from convulsions. But those were the “convulsions” of a particular season, occupying exactly the place which “griping in the guts” held in the weekly bills of certain years in the earlier period. As most of the deaths from infantile diarrhoea are really from convulsions, it is easy to see that high weekly totals of deaths under that generic name must have been from infantile diarrhoea—when they began to rise in August far above the ordinary level of convulsions to fall to the level again in October. It is by precisely the same reading between the lines that we discover, under the head of “diarrhoea and dysentery” in the modern registration returns, that there is hardly any fatal dysentery, not much fatal diarrhoea of adults, but an enormous fatality from the diarrhoea of infants, especially in summer.

The sickness of the latter half of 1669, and of the years following to 1672, which we know from Sydenham and Morton to have been choleraic and dysenteric, was not special to London. The following abstracts of the burial registers of country parishes,

Deaths in Country Parishes of England.