Another cause of the high death-rate was superstition, which regarded disease as a “visitation” which had to be borne without question or inquiry.
With such an attitude towards epidemics, which by some were regarded as due to an unfortunate conjunction of certain planets, it is not to be wondered at that the epidemics were mismanaged; and it is certainly difficult to imagine any measure better calculated to cause the spread of the plague than that of forbidding those affected to leave their houses, and compelling them to stay indoors and infect the rest of the household. The most efficient of all measures which we nowadays adopt for preserving the public health is that of the instant separation of the sick from among the healthy, a plan which had been adopted in old time in the case of “leprosy,” and which we re-introduced in the last century, when the first small-pox hospital was built.
Another great cause of the high mortality was the ignorance of the physicians, who were almost as superstitious as the populace, and who were entirely without any exact or correct knowledge of their art, which they practised almost entirely by the light of the old Greek, Roman, and Arabian writers.
To recapitulate, the causes of the high death-rate were probably the following:—
1. The prevalence of ague from the abundant marshes.
2. The dirt of the city and the houses, and the probable infection of wells from a soil sodden with putrefactive matter.
3. The ill-nourished, drunken, and scorbutic condition of the people, and
4. Their condition of superstition and brutality, which made any rules for public health impossible.
5. The neglect to separate the infected from the healthy.
6. The ignorance of the doctors.
We may get some idea of the state of public health during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by a reference to the families of monarchs.
The difficulty of rearing children was very largely experienced in royal families. I have, by the help of Burke’s “Peerage,” made a list of all the children of monarchs (other than those who ascended the throne) whose ages at death are given by that genealogist.
This difficulty of rearing children, which began in the reign of Edward III., becomes very marked with the reign of Henry VIII., who, as we are told by Froude, was disappointed by a succession of still-born children borne to him by his first wife.
Of the children of James I., three out of five died under 3; of the children of Charles I., the ages at death were 29, 26, 20, 15, 4, 1; of eleven children of James II., by two wives, one (the old Pretender) attained the age of 78, and of another the age is doubtful, but eight died under 4, and two others died at 11 and 15; of the six children of Anne, one reached the age of 11, and the remaining six died under 1 year.
With the accession of George I. this difficulty of rearing royal families appears to have ceased, having been more or less marked during the reigns of 21 monarchs, intervening between Edward III. and George I. What the cause may have been I will not discuss, but I mention the fact because it is probable that causes which affected kings affected subjects also.