Schrock tells us that in Augsburg in 1712 not a house was spared by the disease. According to Waldschmidt in Kiel, ten and more persons were frequently taken ill in one house, and Slevogt says that the disease was fearful because so many persons contracted it at the same time. The disease was, however, not dangerous, for Slevogt continues: “Fear soon vanished when it was seen that although it had spread all over the city, it left the sick with equal rapidity.”
It is estimated that in the epidemic of 1729–1730, 60,000 people developed the disease in Rome, 50,000 in Mayence, and 14,000 in Turin. In London “barely one per cent. escaped.” In Lausanne one-half of the population, then estimated at 4,000, was stricken. In Vienna over 60,000 persons were affected. In the monasteries of Paris so many of the inmates were suffering from the disease that no services could be held.
Huxham is quoted in Thomson’s “Annals” as declaring concerning the epidemic of 1732–33: “Not a house was free from it, the beggar’s hut and the nobleman’s palace were alike subject to its attack, scarce a person escaping either in town or country; old and young, strong and infirm, shared the same fate.”
Finkler writes as follows concerning the epidemic of 1758: “On Oct. 24th, Whytt continues, the pestilence began to abate. He is not sure whether this was due to a change in the weather, or because the disease had already attacked most people, although the latter seems more plausible to him, particularly as he says that ‘in Edinburgh and its vicinity not one out of six or seven escaped,’ and in other localities it is said to have been even worse. In the north of Scotland also, the epidemic was greatly disseminated from the middle of October to the end of November. A young physician wrote to Robert Whytt: ‘It was the most universal epidemic I ever saw, and I am persuaded that more people were seized with it than escaped.’ This same physician reported that ‘it was not at all mortal here.’”
In the epidemic of 1762, we learn from Razoux, de Brest, Saillant, Ehrmann, that the morbidity was great while the mortality was low.
According to Grimm, nine-tenths of the inhabitants of Eisenach contracted the disease in 1767.
Daniel Rainy, of Dublin, in describing the invasion of an institution in 1775–76, tells us that from among 367 persons varying in age from 12 to 90 years, 200 were taken sick. Thomas Glass says: “There sickened in Exeter Hospital all the inmates, one hundred and seventy-three in number; one hundred and sixty-two had coughs. Two or three days after the hospital was invaded the city workhouse was attacked; of the two hundred paupers housed there only very few escaped the disease.”
Gilibert described an extraordinary morbidity in Russia in 1780–81.
Metzger says that in 1782 the Russian catarrh was so universal during the month of March that in many houses all the inhabitants were attacked. During this period, “in St. Petersburg, 30,000, and in Königsberg, 1,000 persons fell ill each day;” in Rome two-thirds of the inhabitants were attacked; in Munich, three-fourths; and in Vienna the severity of the epidemic compelled the authorities to close the theaters for eight days.
The epidemics of 1788–89, 1799–1800 and of 1802–1803 were characterized by a relatively lower morbidity than that of 1830–32, in which the morbidity was again enormous. Likewise in 1833, the morbidity was very great. In Prague “scarcely a house was spared by the plague.” In Petrograd, 10,000 persons were attacked; in Berlin at least 50,000. These are the figures of Hufeland. The Gazette Médicale records the morbidity as being four-fifths of the total number of inhabitants of Paris.