“Of observing the entire freedom from fevers enjoyed by the inhabitants of the numerous crowded courts and alleys within the extensive district comprehended in our visits from that charity.” And again, writing in the winter of 1814-15, Bateman says: “To those who recollect the numerous cases of typhoid fevers [this term did not then mean enteric] which called for the relief of dispensaries twelve or fourteen years ago, and the contagion of which was often with great difficulty eradicated from the apartments where it raged, and even seized the same individuals again and again when they escaped its fatal influences, the great freedom from these fevers which now exists, even in the most close and filthy alleys in London, is the ground of some surprise.” And once more, in the summer of 1816, just as the new epidemic period was about to begin, he says: “The extraordinary disappearance of contagious fever from every part of this crowded metropolis during the long period comprehended by these Reports [since 1804], cannot fail to have attracted the attention of the reader.”

Bateman concluded, not without reason, that this immunity of London from fever was due to the high degree of well-being among the poorer classes in times of plenty; and although he made out that the poor of Dublin, Cork and some Scotch towns did not profit by times of plenty so much as those in London, yet his reason for the abeyance of fever from 1804 to 1816 applied to England, Ireland and Scotland at large, and was doubtless the true reason.

The following figures from Manchester[297], Leeds[298] and Glasgow[299] hospitals, as well as the Irish statistics elsewhere given, are closely parallel with those of London:

Manchester House of Recovery.

Year Cases Deaths
1796-7 371 40
1797-8 339 16
1798-9 398 27
1799-1800 364 41
1800-1 747 63
1801-2 1070 84
1802-3 601 53
1803-4 256 33
1804-5 184 34
1805-6 268 29
1806-7 311 33
1807-8 208 15
1808-9 260 21
1809-10 278 30
1810-11 172 15
1811-12 140 18
1812-13 126 13
1813-14 226 17
1814-15 379 29
1815-16 185 14
1816-17 172 6

Leeds House of Recovery.

Year Cases Deaths
1804 (2 mo.) 10 0
1805 66 6
1806 75 2
1807 35 1
1808 80 3
1809 93 8
1810 75 14
1811 92 4
1812 80 12
1813 137 11
1814 79 4
1815 146 15
1816 121 13
1817 178 8
1818 (10 mo.) 254 20

Glasgow Royal Infirmary (Fever Wards).

Year Cases
1795 18
1796 43
1797 83
1798 45
1799 128
1800 104
1801 63
1802 104
1803 85
1804 97
1805 99
1806 75
1807 25
1808 27
1809 76
1810 82
1811 45
1812 16
1813 35
1814 90
1815 230
1816 399
1817 714
1818 1371

Even such fever as there was in Britain from 1804 to 1817 was not all certainly typhus. The high death-rates at the Manchester fever-hospital in 1804 and 1805 (1 death in 7·5 cases and 1 death in 5·25 cases) may mean a certain proportion of enteric cases in those years. “From 1804 to 1805,” says Ferriar, “many cases were admitted of a most lingering and dangerous kind.... Many deaths took place from sudden changes in the state of the fever, contrary to the usual course of the disease, and only imputable to the peculiar character of the epidemic. Similar cases occurred at that time in private practice.” Next year, 1806, there was an epidemic among the troops at Deal, described under the name of “remittent fever,” which Murchison claims to have been enteric[300]. In September, 1808, says Bateman, several were admitted into the London House of Recovery, with malignant symptoms; “and some severe and even fatal instances occurred in individuals in respectable rank in life.” He still uses the name of typhus; but he is aware that the cases of continued fever, especially in the summer and autumn of 1810, had often symptoms pointing to a bowel-fever rather than to a head-fever[301].