“Well tried through many a varying year
See Levett to the grave descend,
Officious, innocent, sincere,
Of every friendless name the friend.
In misery’s darkest cavern known
His ready help was ever nigh;” etc.
[242] John Coakley Lettsom, M.D., Medical Memoirs of the General Dispensary in London, April 1773 to March 1774. London, 1774.
[243] Nothing could be clearer than Dr John Arbuthnot’s reasoning and advice on this matter half a century before.
[244] London, 1775.
[245] Med. Trans. of the Coll. Phys. Lond. III. (1785), 345: “Observations on the Disease commonly called the Jail or Hospital Fever.” By John Hunter, M.D., physician to the army.
[246] James Sims, M.D., “Scarlatina anginosa as it appeared in London in 1786,” Mem. Med. Soc. Lond. I. 414. Willan, who saw the same epidemic of scarlatinal sore-throat in London in 1786, believed that the angina was also “connected with a different species of contagion, namely, that of the typhus or malignant fever originating in the habitations of the poor, where no attention is paid to cleanliness and ventilation.” Cutaneous Diseases, 1808, p. 333.
[247] The rumour of London fevers seems to have reached Barker, who kept an epidemiological record at Coleshill. Referring to the winter of 1788-89, he says: “At this time there were dreadful fevers in London, fatal to many, and a very infectious one in Coventry, of which many among the poor died, most of them being delirious, and many phrenetical.”
[248] Robert Willan, M.D., Reports on the Diseases of London, particularly during the years 1796-97-98-99 and 1800. London, 1801.
[249] He names specially some streets of St Giles’s parish, the courts and alleys adjoining Liquorpond Street, Hog-Island, Turnmill Street, Saffron Hill, Old Street, Whitecross Street, Golden Lane, the two Bricklanes, Rosemary Lane, Petticoat Lane, Lower East Smithfield, some parts of Upper Westminster, and several streets of Southwark, Rotherhithe, etc. “I recollect a house in Wood’s Close, Clerkenwell, wherein the fomites of fever were thus preserved for a series of years; at length an accidental fire cleared away the nuisance. A house, notorious for dirt and infection, near Clare-market, afforded a farther proof of negligence: it was obstinately tenanted till the wall and floors, giving way in the night, crushed to death the miserable inhabitants.”
[250] Medical Reports on the Effects of Water, Cold and Warm, as a Remedy in Fever and other Diseases. 2nd ed., 1798. It need hardly be explained that Dr Currie was competent on fevers, his use of the clinical thermometer marking him as a man of precision. He is best known to the laity as the biographer of Robert Burns and the generous helper of the poet’s widow and family.