The confusion of commerce, depression of trade and lack of employment which followed the Peace of Paris, and gave occasion to the British and Irish epidemic fevers of 1817-19, gradually righted themselves. The price of wheat, which would have been still higher after the four-months drought of 1818, but for large imports, gradually fell, and was about 50s. in 1821, and 40s. in the winter of 1822-23. After that, it rose somewhat again, and the third decade of the century, in the middle of which occurred the great speculative crash of 1825, was on the whole a hard time for the working classes. The history of fever has few illustrations between the epidemic of 1817-19 and that of 1826-27, excepting the great famine-fever of Connemara and other parts of the West of Ireland in 1822, elsewhere described, which coincided with a somewhat prosperous time in England and called forth a princely charity[338].
The Relapsing Fever of 1827-28.
The epidemic of relapsing fever which was at a height in Dublin in 1826, did not culminate in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and other towns of Scotland until 1828. It was a somewhat close repetition of the epidemic of 1817-19, except that it was chiefly an affair of the towns, owing to depression of trade and want of work following the great crash of commercial credit in 1825-26. In Glasgow, the admissions for fever to the Royal Infirmary began to rise in 1825[339]:
Glasgow: Admissions for Fever.
At Edinburgh the cases of fever treated in hospital were fewer in ordinary years than at Glasgow, but they rose to a higher point in the epidemic years[341]:
Edinburgh: Admissions for Fever.
| Year | ||
| 1824 | 177 | |
| 1825 | 341 | |
| 1826 (nine months) | 456 | |
| 1827 | 1875 | |
| 1828 | 2013 | |
| 1829 | 771 | |
| 1830 | 346 |
Christison gives the following account of the epidemic in Edinburgh in 1827-28:
“Like that of 1817-19, it arose in Edinburgh during a protracted period of want of work and low wages among the labouring classes and tradespeople; it prevailed only among the working classes and unemployed poor—in the Fountainbridge and West Port districts, the Grassmarket ‘closes,’ the Cowgate and the narrow ‘wynds’ descending on either side of the long sloping back of the High Street and Canongate.” The fever had the same three types as in 1817-19—many cases of inflammatory, or relapsing, or synocha, a few of low fever (typhus), and some between the two—militant or inflammatory for a week, then becoming low, and running the continuous course of typhus.... “The inflammatory fever presented the same extreme violence of reaction as in the former epidemic—the same tendency to abrupt cessation, with profuse sweating—the same liability to return abruptly a few days afterwards—and the same disposition to depart finally in a few days more, and again abruptly with free perspiration. The cases of typhus were more frequently severe than in 1818-19. Icteric synocha occurred also oftener, although far from frequently[342].”