[200]. Loimologia.
[201]. Op. citat: p. 501.
[202]. Page 159.
[203]. The following account is taken from Quincy: “Dr. Plott observes, the reasons why Oxford is now much more healthful than formerly, to be the enlargement of the city, whereby the inhabitants, who are not proportionally increased, are not so closely crowded together; and the care of the magistrates in keeping the streets clear from filth: for formerly, he says, they used to kill all manner of cattle within the walls, and suffer their dung and offals to lie in the streets. Moreover, about those times, the Isis and Cherwell, through the carelessness of the townsmen, being filled with mud, and the common shores by such means stopped, did cause the ascent of malignant vapours whenever there happened to be a flood. But since that, by the care and at the charge of Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, in the year 1517, those rivers were cleansed, and more trenches cut for the water’s free passage; the town has continued in a very healthful condition, and in a particular manner so free from pestilential diseases, that the sickness in 1665, which raged in most parts of the kingdom, never visited any person there, although the terms were there kept, and the Court and both houses of Parliament did there reside.”—Plott’s Hist. of Oxfordshire, chap. ii.
[204]. See Dr. Heberden’s Observ. on the Increase and Decrease of different Diseases, and particularly the Plague, p. 71.
[205]. The earliest instance of jail infection, communicated in a Court of Justice, appears to be that mentioned by Mr. Anthony Wood, as having happened “at the Assize kept in the Castle at Cambridge, at the time of Lent, 13th Henry viii. ann. dom. 1521-2, when the Justices there, and all the gentlemen, bailives, and all resorting thither, took such an infection, that many of them died; and almost all that were present fell desperately sick, and narrowly escaped with their lives.” Then comes the memorable black assize at Oxford, in July 1577, the best account of which is that given in “The History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford, by Anthony Wood, M. A. of Merton College”, first published in English from the original MS. in the Bodleian library, by John Gutch, A. M. printed at Oxford in 1796. Another instance is mentioned by Holinshed, (vol. ii, p. 1547) as occurring at Exeter, during the assizes there in March 1586. From this period no remarkable case of jail infection is recorded for a period of 150 years, when at the Lent assizes, some prisoners who had been removed from Ilchester gaol, to take their trials at Taunton, were said to have infected a part of the court, and produced a contagious disease, of which the Chief Baron Pengally, with some of his officers and servants, and Sir James Sheppard, knight, and Serjeant at Law, died afterwards at Blandford in Dorsetshire. Twelve years after, viz. in April, 1742, according to Dr. Huxham (De aëre, &c. vol. ii, p. 82) a putrid fever appeared at Launceston, and occasioned great mortality; this fever, he adds, was generated in the prisons; and widely disseminated by means of the county assize. The next remarkable occurrence of this kind happened at the sessions of the Old Bailey, in the spring of 1750, which proved fatal to the Lord Mayor, and two of the Judges, with several eminent and other persons; this circumstance induced the Magistrates of London to resolve upon attempting to render Newgate more healthy; and they accordingly consulted Dr. Hales and Sir John Pringle about the method which they should follow. Dr. Hales recommended the use of his Ventilator, a machine contrived to pump out the air of any place, and thus to occasion a perpetual renovation of it. The machine was accordingly erected, and its salutary effects soon became apparent, the deaths in Newgate having been reduced from 7 or 8 a week to about 2 in a month. Eleven men were employed in erecting this ventilator, of which no fewer than 7 were seized with the disease; a very interesting account of these men, and of the mode of treatment, were drawn up by Sir John Pringle, and published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1753, vol. xlviii, p. 42.
[206]. Page 144.
[207]. A History of the Epidemic Fever which prevailed in Bristol during the years 1817-18-19, by J. Prichard, M. D.
[208]. Medical Report of the Fever Hospital and House of Recovery, Cork street, Dublin, for the year ending the 5th of Jan. 1819. By Richard Grattan, M.D. &c.
[209]. Medical Report of the Fever department in Stevens’ Hospital, containing a brief Account of the late Epidemic in Dublin, from Sep. to Aug. 1819. By John Crampton, M.D. &c. Dublin, 1819.