[336] See above, p. 110-11.
[337] A complementary measure, namely, notification of contagious sickness to the authorities, was put in practice at Leeds in 1804 on the opening of the House of Recovery there. The Leeds House of Recovery, with fifty beds, was opened on 1 November, 1804, the epidemic of fever being then about over. One of its officers was an inspector, whose duty was “to detect the first appearance of infection, to cause the removal of the patient to the House of Recovery, and to superintend the fumigating and whitewashing of the apartment from which he is removed. So great is the solicitude of the physicians to promote early removal that rewards are offered to such as shall first give information of an infectious fever in their neighbourhoods.” It was claimed that this had been a great success, Leeds having been for twelve years previous to the epidemic of 1817 nearly exempted from two of the most infectious and fatal diseases, namely, typhus and scarlet fever. (It happened, however, that the whole of England, Scotland and even Ireland were exempted to the same remarkable, and of course gratifying degree.) Whitaker, Loidis and Elmete, 1816, p. 85.
[338] A strange epidemic of the early summer of 1824 in a semi-charitable girls’ school at Cowan Bridge, between Leeds and Kendal, which is the subject of a moving chapter in ‘Jane Eyre,’ was inquired into by Mrs Gaskell, the biographer of Charlotte Brontë. Forty girls were attacked with fever. A woman who was sent to nurse the sick, saw when she entered the school-room from twelve to fifteen girls lying about, some resting their heads on the table, others on the ground; all heavy-eyed and flushed, indifferent and weary, with pains in every limb, the atmosphere of the room having a peculiar odour. The symptoms, so far as known, and the circumstances of the school, point more to relapsing fever than to typhus, which is the name given to it by Charlotte Brontë. None died of the fever (it is otherwise in the tale), but one girl died at home of its after-effects. Dr Batty, of Kirby, who was called in, did not consider the type of fever to be alarming or dangerous. The dietary of the school had undoubtedly been most meagre for growing girls, and its discipline severe. The house was old and unsuited for the purposes of a boarding-school.
[339] Cowan, Journ. Statist. Soc. III. (1840) p. 271; Glas. Med. Journ. III. 437.
[340] Some of these were treated at the extra fever-hospital in Spring Gardens.
[341] From the table by Christison, Edin. Med. Journ., Jan. 1858, p. 581.
[342] Life of Christison, “Autobiography.”
[343] John Burne, M.D., Pract. Treatise on the Typhus or Adynamic Fever. London, 1828.
[344] To show the effect of emotion in causing a relapse, he gives an instance, almost the only concrete illustration in all his book: An Irishwoman, Ann McCarthy, aged 26, was admitted to Guy’s Hospital on 20 June, 1827, with “adynamic fever of the second degree,” having been already ill for two weeks: the course of her fever was favourable and she was “soon convalescent.” While still in the ward mending her strength, she lent her bonnet to another female patient to go out with; finding that her kindness had been abused by the woman forgetting to return the bonnet, she became exceedingly angry, relapsed into the fever on the 10th of July, was wildly delirious for several days, and died on the 19th of July. At this time it was the practice at Guy’s to examine the bodies after death; but permission was refused in the case in question, so that Burne was unable to say “whether the bowels were affected.” The case, therefore, may have been one of relapsing enteric fever. A similar ambiguity is discussed by Hughes Bennett in his Principles and Practice of Physic (p. 923), and decided in favour of relapsing fever proper, or relapsing synocha.
[345] Sir William Jenner, M.D., Lectures and Essays on Fevers and Diphtheria, 1849 to 1879. London, 1893.