1 These were the Conqueror, the Cornwall, and the Boyne, which were so damaged in the battles, that they were obliged to bear away for St. Lucia.

2 The following may serve as a specimen of these returns:

State of Health of His Majesty’s Ship Alcide. Carlisle Bay, Barbadoes, 1st June, 1781.

REMARKS.

During the course of last month we had one hundred and fourteen of the men, who contracted the scurvy in the late long cruise, recovered by the use of limes, which were procured at Montserrat. A pint of wine, with an equal quantity of water, made agreeable with sugar and tamarinds, is served to each patient daily. The regimen is exactly the same as mentioned last month.

Since we came into port, very few have been seized with scurvy, but several complain daily of fluxes and feverish complaints, none of which seem at present to be of any consequence.

Four patients have last month complained of an almost total blindness towards evening, accompanied with head-ach, vertigo, nausea, and a sense of weight about the precordia. The pupil is then extremely dilated, but contracts readily when a strong light is presented to it. Two of them had the scurvy in a high degree, one of them slightly, and the other seemed entirely free from it. I am not well acquainted with the nature or cure of this disease, which I believe is called Nyctalopia by some systematic writers.

I gave those who were affected with it an emetic, which brought up a great deal of bile, and relieved the symptoms both of the head and stomach. This encouraged me to a repetition of it, which seemed also to be attended with benefit. I likewise applied blisters behind the ears, and gave bark and elixir of vitriol, with the antiscorbutic course, to those that required it.

I can form no probable conjecture concerning the cause of this disease. I have observed a dilation of the pupil in scorbutic patients, and they complained of a cloud before their eyes, with imperfect vision, which disappeared as the scurvy went off.

WILLIAM TELFORD.

To Dr. Blane,
Physician to the Fleet.

3 Although this hurricane, in itself and its consequences, was so destructive to the lives and health of men, yet, with regard to the inhabitants on shore, it had a surprising and unexpected effect in mending their health. I wrote an account of this hurricane to the late Dr. Hunter, who communicated it to the Royal Society, and the following passage is extracted from it:

“The consequences of this general tumult of nature, on the health of man, was none of the least curious of its effects. I made much inquiry on this head, not only of the medical gentlemen who had the charge of hospitals, and of the physicians of the country, but of the inhabitants, and every one had some cure to relate either of themselves or their neighbours, in a variety of diseases. Nor could I find that either those who were in health, or those who were ill of any disease whatever suffered from it, otherwise than by its mechanical violence; but, on the contrary, that there was a general amendment of health. This is a fact, which I could neither credit, nor would venture to relate, were it not supported by so many concurring testimonies. It had a visible good effect on the acute diseases of the climate. The chronic fluxes, of which there were then some at the naval hospital, were cured or much relieved by it. But the diseases upon which it had most evident and sensible effects, were pulmonic consumptions. Some recent cases of phthisis, and even the acute state of pleurisy, was cured by it; and in the advanced and incurable state of it, the hectic fever was removed, and remarkable temporary relief afforded. A delicate lady of my acquaintance, who was ill of a pleurisy at the time, and passed more than ten hours in the open air, sitting generally several inches deep in water, found herself free of complaint next day; had no return of it; and when I saw her a few weeks after, was in much better health and looks then usual. The people observed that they had remarkably keen appetites for some time after, and the surviving part of them became uncommonly healthy; some of both sexes, whom I had left fallow and thin a few months before, looking now fresh and plump.

It is very difficult to account for this, as well as every thing else in the animal œconomy; but it was probably owing in part, at least, to the very great coldness and purity of the air from the upper regions of the atmosphere. Great agitation of mind sometimes also produces a revolution in health; and we know that the effect of external impressions in general is very different when the mind is vacant, from what it is when occupied and interested by objects, whether of pleasure and satisfaction, or of danger and suffering.”

4 In order to ascertain more exactly the degree of sickness in each month, a column was afterwards added to the form of the returns, expressing the number taken ill of the several diseases in the course of the month.

5 I was informed by Captain Caldwell, that when he commanded the Hannibal, of 50 guns, his crew was so much afflicted with the scurvy, in a passage of nine weeks from St. Helena to Crookhaven, in Ireland, that ninety-two men were confined to their hammocks in the last stage of that disease, though they had been supplied with sugar at St. Helena, and served with it on the passage. They remained three weeks at Crookhaven; at the end of which time every man was fit for duty: and though they had fresh provision, they had no fresh vegetables, so that their cure is to be ascribed to the use of lemons and oranges, which the Captain very humanely ordered to be purchased for them from on board of a foreign ship that happened to put into the same harbour.

6 See Appendix to Part II.

7 They were the Formidable and Namur, of 90 guns; the Arrogant, Conqueror, Marlborough, Hercules, and Fame, of 74 guns; the Yarmouth, Repulse, Prothée, Anson, and Nonsuch, of 64 guns.

8 These were the Prince George, of 90; the Bedford, Canada, and Royal Oak, of 74; the America and Prudent, of 64 guns.

9 This is a term in use for the different articles of seamen’s cloathing, particularly shirts and trowsers.

10 The mortification in the shoulder, mentioned above, was somewhat singular. It happened to a man in the Yarmouth, who, after being for a week ill of a fever and flux, was one day, early in the morning, seized with a pain in the upper part of the right arm, which immediately began to mortify. He soon after became convulsed, and died the same day about two o’clock.

11 Earthquakes are frequent in the West Indies, and perhaps proceed from a weaker operation of the same cause that originally produced the islands themselves, which seem all to have been raised from the sea by subterraneous fire. There are evident vestiges of volcanoes in them all, except Barbadoes; but there are other unequivocal marks of this island having been raised from the bottom of the sea; for it is entirely formed of coral, and other sub-marine productions, of which the strata are broken, and the parts set at angles to each other, as might be expected from such a cause. There is, perhaps, at all times in the caverns of the earth, elastic vapour struggling to vent itself, and when near the surface, it may sometimes overcome the incumbent masses of matter, and produce certain convulsions of nature. In the account of the hurricane which I wrote to Dr. Hunter, I gave reasons for believing, from the testimony of the inhabitants, that hurricanes are attended with earthquakes; and if a conjecture might be advanced concerning the cause of this, it might be said, that as the atmosphere is lighter at that time, by several inches of the barometer, the elastic vapour, confined by the weight of the incumbent earth and atmosphere, being less compressed, may exert some sensible effects, producing a sort of explosion.

12 Since the publication of the first edition of this work I have been informed that this complaint is not so rare on shore as in the fleet, which may be partly owing to the greater coolness of the air at sea, and partly from the seamen not having been a sufficient length of time in the climate to be affected with this disease, as few of them had been more than two years from England. But as this affection of the liver was very common in the fleets and naval hospitals in the East Indies, it is evident that there is a great difference of the climates in this respect. It is worth remarking, that it sometimes breaks out in the West-India Islands like an epidemic. The complaint, for instance, was very little known in the island of Grenada, till about the year 1785, when it became very frequent in a particular quarter of the island; and the gentleman who sent the description of it to England alledged, that there were the most unequivocal proofs of its being contagious. It was most successfully treated by very copious bloodletting, and in exciting a salivation by mercury. See Dr. Duncan’s Medical Commentaries, Decad. 2, vol. I.

13 Dr. Lind, on the authority of Mr. Ives, surgeon to Admiral Matthews.

14 London Gazette, June, 1781.

15 This is well illustrated by the manner in which Captain Nott, of the Centaur, was killed in Fort-Royal Bay. This brave man, having carried his Ship nearer the enemy than the rest of the line, but nevertheless at a great distance, had his signal made to keep the line, and having gone into his cabin, as it is said, to examine the import of the signal, a cannon ball struck him in the groin, and it was so far spent, that it stuck in his body. It tore away a whole plank of the ship’s side, the splinters of which killed a young gentleman, the only person near him.

16 I have seen an account of the diseases of the army at St. Lucia for a whole year, kept by Mr. Everard Home, an ingenious gentleman belonging to the army hospital, and it appears, that, during ten months out of the twelve, the dysentery was the predominant disease. This seems to contradict the opinion, that the land air is more apt to occasion fevers than fluxes; but it is to be remarked, that the sickness of the soldiers on this island was not so much owing to the malignant influence of the air, the situation of the garrison being high and airy, as to the bad accommodations and provisions, together with hard labour.

17 See Essay on the Yellow Fever, by Dr. Hume, in a Collection of Essays published by Dr. D. Monro.

18 Campbell’s Lives of the Admirals, Vol. IV.

19 The late Dr. William Hunter.

20 See Appendix to Part II.

21 Captain Samuel Thompson.

22 As my own stay at different ports was short, and as my own knowledge could not extend beyond that period, Dr. Farquarson, First Commissioner of Sick and Wounded Seamen, very politely gave me leave to inspect the books of the different hospitals at his office, and I collected from them the fate of all the men that were landed.

23 It is proper to mention, that the name of the disease in the hospital books being taken from the ticket sent on shore with each sick person, great accuracy is not to be expected, as this is frequently done in a careless manner. My returns were made with great exactness; and, in the latter part of the war, the hospital books may also be depended upon in this respect, the tickets, at my request, having been made out with accuracy.

24 In this, and the other tables, the smaller fractions are neglected.

25 See the last chapter of Part III.

26 In the year 1741, the fleet under Admiral Vernon was at Jamaica at the same time of the year; and the following is the account of the men sent to the hospital in May and June:

There was on board of this fleet about two thirds of the number of men that was on board of the fleet in 1782. I cannot ascertain how many died on board of the ships in Admiral Vernon’s fleet; but the deaths at the hospital alone are somewhat more than what happened to our fleet both on board and at the hospital.

27 I was enabled, after coming to England, to ascertain the deaths in that part of the squadron from which I happened at any time to be absent, by having leave from the Navy Board to inspect the ships’ books deposited at their office.

28 See Appendix to Part II.

29 The mortality of the army in the West Indies is much greater; for it appears by the returns of the War Office, that there died in the year 1780, two thousand and thirty-six soldiers, which being calculated by the numbers on the station, and those who arrived in the convoy in March and July, the annual mortality is found to be one in four. The greatness of this mortality will appear in a still stronger light, when it is considered that those who serve in the army are the most healthy part of the community. When I was at the encampment at Coxheath in the year 1779, I was politely favoured with a sight of the returns, both of the general officers and physician, and it appeared that in an army of ten thousand and eighty-nine men, there died, from the 10th of June to the 2d of November, forty-three, exclusive of twelve who died of small pox. This being calculated, is equal to an annual mortality of one in a hundred and nine; and it was not half so much in the encampment of the former year. It appears by Mr. Simpson’s tables, that the mortality of mankind in England, from the age of twenty to forty-five, which includes the usual age of those who serve in the navy and army, is one in fifty.

30 See Table II.

31 See Table II.

32 None are comprehended but those who were killed or wounded in battles in which the whole fleet was present, this account not including those who fell in single actions in frigates or other ships.

33 It would appear, that, anciently, though the slaughter in battle was greater than in modern times, yet that disease was still more destructive than the sword. One of the oldest testimonies to this purpose is in the History of Alexander’s Expedition, by Arrian—τους μεν ἐν ταῖς μαχαις ἀπολωλεκασιν, ὁι δε ἐκ των τραυματων ἀπομαχοι γεγενημενοι, ὁι πλειοῦς δε νοσω ἀπολωλεσαν.—Arrian. Hist. Alex. Exped.

Lib. v. cap. 26.

34 Upwards of three thousand were also lost at sea in ships of war belonging to the same fleets in the hurricane of October, 1780, and in the storm in September, 1782, in which the Ville de Paris and the other French prizes were lost on their passage to England.

35 The authors from whom I have borrowed have been chiefly Dr. Lind and Capt. Cook. To the former we are indebted for the most accurate observations on the health of seamen in hot climates; of the improvements made by the latter, an excellent compendium may be seen in Sir John Pringle’s Discourse before the Royal Society, on the occasion of adjudging a prize medal to Capt. Cook for his paper upon this subject.

36 In the late war sickness alone was not the cause of want of success in any instance, except in the last action in the East Indies, in which so many men were ill of the scurvy, that there were not hands enow to manage the guns.

There is another fact in history, which, though not so applicable to this subject as those above recited, forcibly evinces how important a study the health of men ought to be in military affairs. When Henry V. was about to invade France, he had an army of fifty thousand men; but owing to a sickness which arose in the army, in consequence of some delays in the embarkation, their number was reduced to ten thousand at the battle of Agincourt. The disease of which they chiefly died was the dysentery.

Rapin.

37 It is not meant by this to insinuate that every commander is absolutely accountable for the health of his ship’s company, and censurable when they are sickly; for this may depend on his predecessor in command, or a stubborn infection may have prevailed from the original fitting out or manning of the ship which he may not have superintended.

38

39 Wherever causes are obscure, superstition naturally ascribes them to some preternatural influence; and what seemed farther to have encouraged this, anciently, was, that violent epidemics occurred most frequently in camps and at sieges where great political conjunctures were likely to arise, in which superior powers were supposed to interest themselves. Thus we read in Homer of fatal diseases being sent as punishments by the gods. But the pestilential diseases so often mentioned by poets and historians as prevailing in cities and armies, were probably nothing else but fevers, produced partly perhaps by the scarcity and bad quality of provisions, but probably still more by corrupted human effluvia, which was very apt to he produced by the want of personal cleanliness, to which the mode of cloathing among the ancients would more particularly subject them, especially in camps and besieged towns.

40 If the experiments of modern philosophy are to be depended on, they go a certain way to account for the unwholesomeness of air from woods in hot climates, and in wet weather; for Dr. Ingenhousz found that the effluvia of plants in the night time, and in the shade, are more poisonous in hot than in cold weather; but though there is a salubrity in the effluvia in sunshine, the heat of the weather makes no difference with regard to this. He found also that vegetables, when wet, yield an unwholesome air.

It is difficult to ascertain how far the influence of vapours from woods and marshes extend; but there is reason to think that it is to a very small distance. When the ships watered at Rock Fort, they found that if they anchored close to the shore, so as to smell the land air, the health of the men was affected; but upon removing two cables length, no inconvenience was perceived. I was informed of the following fact, in proof of the same, by the medical gentlemen who attended the army in Jamaica:—The garrison of Fort Augusta, which stands very near some marshes, to which it is to leeward when the land wind blows, was yet remarkably healthy; but it became at one time extremely sickly upon the breaking in of the sea in consequence of a high tide, whereby the water which was retained in the hollows of the fort produced a putrid moisture in the soil, exhaling a vapour offensive to the smell, and with all the noxious effects upon health commonly arising from the effluvia of marshes.

41 Dr. Hendy has lately published an ingenious treatise upon this disease.

42 See Sydenham’s Works.

43 See Part I. Book II. Chap. VI.

44 We have a proof of this fact in particular, in the account of the jail distemper, which broke out at the Old Bailey in the year 1750.

45 See Martin’s History of the Western Islands, and Medical Communications, Vol. I. page 68.

46 There are some contagious diseases which cannot be propagated but by their own peculiar infections, as has been before observed, just as the seeds of vegetables are necessary to continue their several species; so that if the infectious poison were lost, so would the disease. Of this kind are the small pox, and the other diseases to which man is subject but once during life. There are other diseases which produce infection without having themselves proceeded from it. Of this kind are fevers and fluxes.

But there is no infection of any kind, however virulent, that affects indiscriminately all persons exposed to it. If a number of persons, who never have had the small pox, are equally exposed to it, some will be seized, while others will escape, who will be affected at another time, when they happen to be more susceptible. It is doubtful how far the habit of being exposed to such specific infections renders the body insensible to them, as was said with regard to fevers; but there is another principle of the animal œconomy laid down and illustrated by Mr. Hunter, which goes at least a certain length in explaining this variable state of the body with respect to its susceptibility of infectious diseases. This principle is, that the body cannot be affected by more than one morbid action at the same time. If a person is exposed to the small pox, for instance, while he labours under a fever, or while he is under the influence of the measles, he will not catch the first till the other has run its course. It may happen, therefore, that people escape the effect of contagion in consequence of being at the time under the influence of some other indisposition, either evident or latent: and supposing the body to be exposed to a number of noxious powers at the same time, one only could take effect. But it seems difficult to explain why some of those who are actually seized, and who have previously been to all appearance in equally good health, shall have it in a very mild degree, while in others it will be malignant and fatal. This is very remarkable with regard to the small pox, which are in some cases so slight, that they can hardly be called a disease, while in others they are so malignant, as hardly to admit of any alleviation from art. May not this, in some measure, be explained from some of the principles above mentioned, in the following manner:—The small pox, in their mildest form, are attended with little or no fever, which, therefore, is not essential to them; and when we see them attended with various forms of fever, and thereby prove fatal even in the most hale constitutions, we ought not to attribute this to any thing in the nature of the small pox, but rather to say, that they have served as an agent in exciting a fever, for which there happened to be some previous latent disposition, that would not otherwise have exerted itself, and that this disposition, or contamination, as it may be called, may have been induced by some past exposure to morbid effluvia, which either from habit, or some other circumstance, may not have been sufficiently powerful to excite the constitution to fever without some such stimulus. Any other occasional circumstance producing disturbance or irregularity in the functions of the body, may, in like manner, excite any particular kind of fever to which the body may at that time be disposed. Thus the amputation of a limb will have this effect; also exposure to cold or fatigue, and intemperance in eating or drinking.

It would appear from these considerations, that there are certain circumstances, or temporary situations of constitution, which invite infection, and render its effect more certain and violent in one case than another. There are artificial methods, however, of obtruding it, as it were, upon the constitution, though not particularly disposed, or even though averse to receive it; and may not this, in some measure, account for the greater safety of some diseases when communicated by inoculation, than when caught in the natural way?

But these, as well as many other facts in animal nature, do not admit of a satisfactory explanation upon any principle as yet known. Even the most common operations of the body, such as digestion and generation, when considered in their causes and modes of action, are so obscure and mysterious, as to be almost beyond the reach of rational conjecture. A little reflection will teach us the utmost modesty with regard to our knowledge of such things; for nature seems to have innumerable ways of working, particularly in the animal functions, to which neither our senses can extend, nor perhaps could our intellects comprehend them. Had we not, for instance, been endowed with the sense of sight, nothing could have led us even to suspect the existence of such a body as light; and there may be numberless other subtile and active principles pervading the universe, relative to which we have no senses, and from the knowledge of whose nature and exigence we must for ever be debarred. We have, indeed, become acquainted with electricity by an operation of reason; and animals have lately been discovered to which the electric fluid serves as a medium of sense through organs calculated to excite it, and to receive and convey its impressions.

But there are few subjects we can study that are more subtle and obscure than the influence of one living body on another. There is a familiar instance of the great subtilety of animal effluvia, and also of the fineness of sense in a dog’s being able to trace his master through crowds, and at a great distance; and we can conceive that infectious matter may adhere, and be communicated in a similar manner. We have endeavoured to illustrate the great obscurity of its operation by an allusion to generation, digestion, and other animal functions, with which it is equally obscure and inexplicable. It is similar to generation in this, that its influence does not pass from one species of animal to another; for the poison of the plague, that of the small pox, that of fever, and the venereal disease, do not affect brutes47, nor do the infectious diseases of brutes affect different species of them, nor the human species. The only exception to this, that we know of, is the bite of a mad dog.

From these facts, and also from what was formerly mentioned of contagion not affecting indiscrimately all that may be exposed to it, it would appear that some nice coincidence of circumstances is necessary to modify an animal body, so as to receive its action. There must be a sort of unison, as it were, or sympathy, betwixt different living bodies, so as to render them susceptible of each other’s influence.

It is none of the least curious facts with regard to infection, that there are some species of it by which the body is liable to be affected only once in life. When this is considered, it is indeed conformable to what happens in the course of the disease itself; for, unless there was in the body a power of resisting it, there could be no such thing as recovery. Where the disease actually exists, the continued presence of the poison, which is also infinitely multiplied, would infallibly prove fatal in all cases, unless the living powers were to become insensible to it48.

47 Hunter’s Experiments.

48 Mr. Hunter’s Lectures.

49 It is sincerely to be wished that this were adopted, and it is surprising that an article so salutary and necessary, and so difficult to be procured on foreign stations, should not have been the object of public attention, rather than a mere article of luxury, such as tobacco. But in order that it might not be a matter of choice with seamen, it would be worth while to supply them with it at prime cost, or even as a gratuity, and then they might be compelled to use it for the purpose of cleanliness. There are other articles of less importance, but being necessary to enable men upon foreign stations to keep themselves neat and clean, deserve to be made the object of public instruction. These are handkerchiefs for the neck, thread, worsted, needles, buckles, and knives.

50 At the time I am writing this, (March 8th, 1785) there has occurred a fact which proves the effect of time in generating infection. There now prevails a contagious fever in several of the hospitals in London, and, among others, in that to which I am physician. In another hospital it has been so violent, that there has been a vulgar report that the plague had broke out in it. The same fever also prevails among the poor at their own houses. The cause of it seems to be, that the cold weather has been uncommonly long and severe; for the frost began early in December, and the cold has hitherto been more like that of winter than spring. The thermometer all this month has varied from 30° to 35°. Cold is favourable to infection, by preventing ventilation; for people exclude the air in order to keep themselves warm, and the poor in particular do so on account of their bad clothing, and their not being able to afford fuel to make good fires. Heat is the great destroyer of infection, and seems to act by evaporating, and thereby dissipating it; and the effect of fires in apartments is to produce a constant change of air, thereby preventing its stagnation and corruption, and the accumulation of unwholesome effluvia. With this view, a chimney is of great use, even though no fire should be kept in it, as it serves for a ventilator. But if an aperture were to be made in an apartment merely with a view to ventilation, it should be placed in that part of the wall next the ceiling; for foul air naturally tends upwards, and the external air entering at the top of a room, would not be so apt to subject those within to the effect of cold, as it would not blow directly upon them. There would also be this advantage in jails, that apertures in this situation would not be so liable to be forced for the purpose of escape as if they were nearer the floor; and in hospitals they would be out of reach of those who, wishing to indulge in warmth, at the expence of pure air, might be induced to shut the windows. But an external communication with the air any where is of the utmost importance; and it is observable in Mr. Howard’s account of prisons, that the jail distemper was most frequently to be met with where there was no chimney.

51 It is of some consequence to attend to the materials of the seamen’s beds; for, instead of flock, they are frequently fluffed with chopped rags, which, consisting of old clothes, emit a disagreeable smell, and may even contain infection.

52 By a berth is understood the interval between two guns, or any space between decks, which is sometimes formed into a sort of apartment by means of a partition made of canvass.

53 It is remarkable that this method of purifying was practised in the most ancient times, as we learn from the following passage in Homer, where Ulysses is represented fumigating the apartments of his palace in which the suitors had been slain:

This practice was probably founded in superstition, rather than the knowledge of nature. That some divine influence should be ascribed to fire was very natural, as the principal deities of the ancients were only personifications of the elements; and it is worthy of remark, that their name for sulphur signifies something divine το θεῖον, which was probably owing to its being found in those chasms of the earth, in Sicily and Italy, which were supposed to communicate with the infernal regions; for the whole Greek mythology relating to these was taken from the phænomena attending the subterraneous fires in those parts. It is curious farther to remark, in other instances, how facts useful to mankind, the truth of which has been confirmed in later times by the more enlightened knowledge of nature, were first suggested by some superstitious circumstance. Thus the wound received by Sarpedon could not be cured, according to the Poet, till, by divine intimation, he was desired to apply to it the rust of the spear with which it had been inflicted, in consequence of which it healed. But the weapons in those days were made of brass, so that the rust of the spear must have been the ærugo æris, which has been found by the experience of modern surgery to be one of the best detergents in ill-conditioned sores. It is probably, from a false analogy, founded on some such incident, that an idea prevails among the vulgar, which has become proverbial, that some part taken from the offending body is good in all external injuries. Thus some part of a mad dog is said to have a virtue in curing his bite. Herein may be seen the difference of that knowledge which is suggested by superstition, and that which is acquired by the observation of nature.

54 A loggerhead is a large round mass of iron, with a long handle to it.

55 A fact, related in Anson’s Voyage, is also strongly in proof of the same opinion. When the rich Spanish prize was taken, it was necessary to crowd the prisoners into the hold, for fear of an insurrection, which was to be dreaded from their numbers; yet, when they arrived in China, none of them had died, nor had any disease broke out. They suffered only in their looks, being wan and emaciated to a great degree.

56 It may be brought as a farther proof of a warm climate being unfavourable to every sort of infection, that though the itch is very common in ships and hospitals in Europe, I do not remember ever to have met with it in the West Indies, except in ships newly arrived from England.

57 This circumstance, in the character of the English, is only of modern date; for we learn from Erasmus, who was in England about two hundred and fifty years ago, that they were then extremely slovenly. The following passage is extracted from a letter he wrote to a physician in York, after his return to Holland:—“Conclavia solâ fere strata sunt argillâ, tum scirpis palustribus, qui subinde sic renovantur ut fundamentum maneat aliquoties annos viginti sub se fovens sputa, vomitus, mictum canum et hominum, projectam cerevisiam et piscium reliquias, aliasque sordes non nominandas.” He adds, that the windows were very ill calculated for ventilation, and imputes to the closeness and filthiness of the houses the frequent and long continued plagues with which England was infested, and particularly the sweating sickness, which, he says, seemed peculiar to this country. He mentions that his own country had been freed from the pestilence by certain changes that the State had made in the houses, in consequence of the advice of some learned man. Erasm. Lib. xxii. Epistol. 13.—It is probable that the greater number of those epidemics, called plagues, were only bad infectious fevers. What would contribute still more to the production of infection was the want of linen, which was hardly in use in those days. The disappearance, or at least the great diminution of such complaints in modern times, particularly in London, has been ascribed to the great increase in the proportion of vegetable food; but it is certainly more owing to the improvement in personal cleanliness, and to the greater spaciousness and neatness of houses. As a farther proof of this, it may be mentioned that in the charity, called the Charterhouse, in London, founded by Henry the Eighth, for the maintenance and education of poor boys, their sustenance is all animal food, as it was at the original institution, yet they are extremely healthy. The same observation applies to Winchester school, which was founded some ages before that.

There are some passages in ancient history in confirmation of the same opinion. Herodotus relates, that the ancient Egyptians were the most healthy of all the nations, except the Libyans, and he imputes this to the invariableness of their weather, and the serenity of their sky. But he mentions in another part of his works, that they were also the most cleanly of all people, not only in their household utensils, but in their persons, and that their clothing was chiefly of linen, which it was one of the principal studies of their life to wash and keep clean—ἑιματα δε λινεα φορεουσι ἀιει νεοπλυτα ὲπιτηδευοντες τουτο μαλισα. Herodot. Euterp. 37.—It is remarkable that he makes no mention of the plague, though he gives a very minute account of the country from his own observation, from whence it may be naturally inferred, that it did not then exist there, though Egypt is now so subject to it, that the plague is supposed by many to be an endemial disease in it. It would appear also from another passage in this historian, that he uses the word λοιμος, which we translate plague in a loose sense to signify any violent acute distemper; for he relates that a great part of the army of Xerxes, in their retreat from Greece, perished by the plague λοιμου and dysentery, in consequence of famine. Herod. Lib. viii. cap. 115.