Market Towns.
| Year | Registers examined | No. with excess of death | Deaths in same | Births in same | ||||
| 1727 | 33 | 19 | 3606 | 2441 | ||||
| 1728 | 34 | 23 | 4972 | 2355 | ||||
| 1729 | 36 | 27 | 6673 | 3494 | ||||
| 1730 | 36 | 16 | 3445 | 2529 |
Norwich.
| Year | Buried | Baptized | ||
| 1728 | 1417 | 774 | ||
| 1729 | 1731 | 843 |
Country Parishes.
| Year | Registers examined | With excess of burials | Burials in same | Baptisms in same | ||||
| 1726 | 181 | 22 | 542 | 495 | ||||
| 1727 | 180 | 55 | 1368 | 1091 | ||||
| 1728 | 180 | 80 | 2429 | 1536 | ||||
| 1729 | 178 | 62 | 2015 | 1442 | ||||
| 1730 | 176 | 39 | 1302 | 1022 | ||||
| 1731 | 175 | 24 | 700 | 614 |
The best epidemiologists of the time were not in London, but at York, Ripon, Plymouth, Cork and Dublin. Leaving the Irish history to a separate chapter, we shall find in the annals of Wintringham, Hillary and Huxham a somewhat detailed account of the fevers which caused the very high mortalities of the years 1727-29, with an occasional glimpse of the circumstances in which the fevers arose. Much of what follows relates to the same nervous, hysteric or “putrid” fever, with or without relapses, that has been described for London. Going back a little, Wintringham says[115] that the continued fevers of 1720 were milder than those of the year before (which were synochus or typhus) and were often languid or nervous, with giddiness, stupor and nervous tremblings, a quick pulse, a whitish tongue, no thirst, and sweats of the head, neck and chest: this fever lasted twenty days or more, and ended in a general sweat. He had mentioned the “languid nervous fevers” first in the years 1716 and 1717, and he mentions them again as mixed with or following the synochus or typhus of 1727-28.
In April, 1727, there were fevers prevalent, remitting and intermitting, but with uncertain paroxysms; in May, a fever with pleuritic pains; in July, a putrid fever in some, but the chief diseases of that month were “remittents and intermittents,” which were often attended by cutaneous eruptions, sometimes of dusky colour and dry, at other times full of clear serum; which, “as they depended upon a scorbutic taint, tormented the sick with pruritus.” The sick persons in these remittents were for the most part drowsy and stupid, especially during the paroxysm; the fevers were followed by lassitude, debility, languor of spirits and hysteric symptoms.
Hillary[116], who practised at Ripon, not far from Wintringham, at York, records in 1726 the prevalence of remittents and intermittents: “some had exanthematous eruptions towards the latter end of the disease, filled with a clear or yellowish water, which went or dried away without any other inconvenience to the sick but an uneasy itching for a few days”—just as Wintringham had described a miliary fever for 1727. It is also under 1726 that he describes the same drowsy and nervous symptoms of Wintringham’s summer fever of 1727:
“Ancient and weak hysterical people had nervous twitchings and catchings, and were comatous and delirious; some were very languid, sick and faint, and had tremors; the young and robust, who had more full pulses, were generally delirious, unless it was prevented or taken off by proper evacuations and cooling medicines. I found blistering to be of very great service in this fever, and the sick were more relieved by it than ever I observed in any other fever whatever. People of lax, weak constitutions were very low and faint, and had frequent, profuse, partial sweatings, which most commonly were cold and clammy.” Huxham also, at the other end of England, says that in October and November, 1727, a slow nervous fever attacked not a few; and under the date of January, 1728, he confirms the Yorkshire experiences of the prevalence of angina.