turous speculators, all progress would be impossible. Yet there are limits to the inquiries of philosophy, and to the powers of an individual, and the world may lose a great deal by impatience at grasping at too much. Dr Darwin was not equal to the great task which he undertook; perhaps the time is not come for a complete theory of animal life; he has explained some parts with great ingenuity, but the absurdity of some of his speculations has thrown the shade of romance upon the whole. The prac tical parts of the Zoonomia are excellent. The penetrating and observing mind of the author is displayed in the collection of a variety of facts, and in the bold conclusions which he has drawn from them; and the suggestions of his vigorous intellect and experience will be sought for and prized, whilst "the looser analogies which dress out the imagery of poetry" will be soon neglected and forgotten. THE INQUIRER. No XV. What was the cause of the Sweating-sickness? "Sua cuique domus funesta videtur: Et quia causa latet, locus est in crimine notus." OVID. Metam. Lib. VII EVERY "VERY attempt to investigate the nature and causes of an epidemical disease, which is attended with remarkable symptoms, although unsuccessful, is still meritorious. It was, therefore, pleasing to find that Dr Willan, in his learned publication on cutaneous diseases, has thrown out a suggestion respecting the origin of sweating-sickness, the whole history of which forms one of the most curious articles in the annals of medicine. Dr Caius has given an elaborate history of this pestilential disease, and he called it the Ephemera Britannica. It first appeared in the army of the Earl of Richmond, afterwards King Henry VII., upon his landing at Milford Haven in 1485; and it soon spread to London, where it raged from the beginning of August to the end of October. It appeared in England four times afterwards, at unequal intervals; and although Sennertus says, that it prevailed in this country for forty years together, yet contemporary physicians and historians have described the periods of its cessation; and it is well known to have appeared only in the following years, viz. 1485, 1506, 1517, 1528, and, lastly, in 1551. The summer season was always the period of its commencement, and it continued rife from three to five months. Its attack was extremely sudden. It began generally with an affection of some particular part, occasioning a sense of a hot vapour running through the limb. To this succeeded excessive internal heat, unquenchable thirst, and most profuse sweating. Anxiety, restlessness, sickness, violent pain of the head, delirium, and excessive drowsiness attended its progress; and frequently, in a short time after the eruption of the sweat, the patient was carried off. The violence of the attack was over in fifteen hours, yet the patient was not in a state of security till the expiration of twenty-four hours, and hence the disease has been properly denominated an ephemera. The persons most liable to the disease were those in high health, of middle age, and of better rank and condition: children, poor and old peoplewere less subject to its influence. The numbers carried off by it were very great: in the town of Shrewsbury, where Caius resided, 960 died within a few days; yet, if this statement be true, the lower classes of society could not be wholly exempt. What is most to be regretted in the history of this disease, is the little information to be collected from different writers with respect to the cause of it. The most general opinion is, that it arose from some peculiar state of the atmosphere, and was propagated by contagion, but no writer has distinctly pointed out the connection of this, or of any other epidemic, with a specific condition of the air, nor detected any peculiarity in the circumstances immediately relating to animal life. "The sweating-sickness (says Dr Willan) which occurred more than once in England at the beginning of the sixteenth century, was perhaps owing to some disease or depravation in wheat, or to some noxious vegetable growing with it in particular situations *." This idea seems to have been suggested by some analogy to be traced between the fatal epidemic called feu sacré, feu St Antoine, mal des ardents, &c. which is supposed to have originated from eating rye damaged by a parasitic plant, constituting the disorder in corn termed by the French ergot. Whatever effect such food might have in producing the disease attributed to it, I must confess that I have no sort of reliance upon the hypothesis of damaged corn being the cause of the sweating-sickness, and I shall state the following objections: 1. The symptoms produced by eating bread made of damaged corn are essentially different from those of the sweating-sickness, being * Willan on Cutaneous Diseases, Part IV. p. 449, note. being pain, swelling, and mortification of the extremities, without inflammation and without fever, but frequently attended with spasms and convulsions*. 2. There is a disease termed raphania, from its supposed origin from eating corn mixed with the raphanum raphanistrum, which also differs materially in its symptoms from the sweatingsickness t For 3. There is no evidence of the corn being damaged, either by bad seasons, or by the intermixture of noxious vegetables, in those years in which the sweating-sickness appeared. Stow notices the occurrence of the disease in the years above-mentioned; but he says nothing about a scarcity of corn at those times, which would have been the case if the wheat was damaged. as in seasons when corn is injured by blight or mildew it is scarce and dear; so in plentiful harvests the low price is the most authentic proof of its goodness. Holinshed mentions the sickness, but gives no account of any scarcity in the years when it occurred; yet there is a scarcity of corn particularly noticed by him, in seasons when the disease did not prevail. In 1486, the year after the first appearance of the disease, wheat was very dear; and in 1517, corn was in great abundance, though the sweating plague, as it was sometimes called, made great havoc in London, and a malignant murrain taged among cattle. In looking over the price of corn for 600 years previous to the beginning of the eighteenth century, it will be found, that the greatest dearth was experienced in those years, in which the sweating sickness, and other epidemics were not heard of; and, at the period of its greatest malignity, wheat and rye were comparatively cheap §. 4. Some distinguished physicians have doubted whether damaged rye, secale cornutum, mutterkorn of the Germans, be ever productive of any disorder. Pallas, Model, Schlegel, Parmentier, and Salerne, have supported that opinion, and some of them are said to have eaten bread made of ergoted rye-flour, without suffering any inconvenience; and different kinds of animals have devoured the corn with impunity ¶. Symptoms resembling those attributed *Vide Tissot's Letter to Dr Baker, Phil. Trans. Vol. Iv. † Amenit. Academ. tom. vi. Handbuch der Toxicologie, von J. Frank. Stow-Annales of England, (edit. 1. 631,) pages 471, 485, 507, 605. Holinshed-Chronicles, Vol. iii. (edit 1557,) p. 1426, 1460, &c. Vide Chronicon Preciosum, 1707. Vide Memoires de la Societé Royale de Medicine, 1777. Vogel. Acad. prælectiones de cognoscend. et curand. morbis, p. 397. attributed to ergoted rye, have appeared where no rye was eaten, and no damaged flour could be detected *. 5. All the instances recorded of the ill effects of bad corn, are alleged to have been caused by damaged rye or barley, none by wheat; therefore, the northern counties, and Wales and Scotland, were more likely to be affected by the sweating-sickness, if it proceeded from such a cause; but this was not the fact :-and again, the lower class of people would suffer most, in consequence of the bad qualities of the bread, which did not happen in the sweating-sickness. 6. All the vegetable poisons, whose seed can ever be mixed with corn, such as lolium temulentum, bromus multiflorus, agrostemma, raphanum raphanistrum, produce effects like a large dose of opium-differing in every circumstance from fever--they are strongly sedative or narcotic, whenever swallowed in sufficient quantity, to excite any morbid action in the system. Experience has shewn, that the pestilential fevers, which have at different times, (and more frequently in former times than at present), afflicted mankind, although alike in their principal symptoms, yet differ so much in their mode of attack, and in the train of morbid associations, that they seem, as it were, to constitute so many different diseases; and since words are admitted for explanations, and diseases are classed according to a particular symptom, or to some affection of a particular part, without attending to the whole combination of symptoms, epidemics will have different names at different times; and what one writer calls the plague, another calls the dysentery, and a third may style the sweatingsickness. Typhus fever was most widely diffused through the metropolis during, and for a short time subsequent to the years of scarcity, 1797, 1799, &c. since which period, the produce of the seasons has been abundant, and London has been remarkably free from contagious fever +. Dr Bateman is too logical and cautious a reasoner, to infer from this, that typhus fever is produced by scarcity of corn; he only states the fact, in his valuable reports of the diseases of a very extensive district; and the connection in point of time between two such great evils, pestilence and famine, is well worthy of being recorded. Little connection, however, appears to exist between them as cause and effects in the case of the sweating-sickness; for the disease broke out among the foreign levies of the Earl of Richmond, * Phil. Transact. 1762.-Dr Wollaston's cases. + Quarterly Report of the Carey-Street Dispensary, Edin. Medical and Surgical Journal, No. xv. Richmond, and was probably generated amongst them in the dirty and crowded transports on board of which they were embarked; and it is said to have chiefly affected the higher classes of society, which may be construed, that it did not spare any persons who came within reach of the contagious effluvia. The method of cure adopted, latterly with considerable success, seems to warrant the conclusion of its being a fever, not a disease produced by any vegetable poison; the practice was, to promote free sweating, and to maintain it with proper support as long as the disorder lasted. Why this singular variety of lever should be renewed so many times at irregular intervals-why it should prevail most in England, and why it should at length entirely cease, are questions extremely difficult, perhaps impossible to be answered. Sydenham remarks, that it is not usual for the plague to attack Great Britain oftener than once in about forty years, and though he attributes something to a disposition in the air which favours its growth and increase, yet he does not consider any state of the atmosphere alone capable of producing it. If we observe with attention the course of the plague, small-pox, measles, and other contagious diseases, we perceive they all have a tendency to rage with great violence in particular places, after certain intervals. People become negligent of the means of preventing infection, until their attention be awakened by the breaking out of the discase in their neighbourhood; a general inoculation, or a general cleaning and white-washing then takes place, tranquillity of mind follows, soon degenerating into a forgetfulness of what has once happened, and indifference to the means of prevention. A new series of calamities is necessary to excite their attention again, and no wonder when the remedy is applied in a number of places at the same time, that those places should remain free from the discase for nearly the same period, and when the contagion is brought by accident, or is generated in one place, that becomes a signal for others liable to the same fate. This, at least, seems to be the case with typhus fever and small-pox, and if the vaccine inoculation be not strenuously urged, a vast crop of patients will spring up in a few years, liable to be destroyed by that dreadful plague. The Fever-Institution has done prodigious benefit by removing the infected patients, and destroying the contagion in the crowed courts and lanes of the metropolis. It is to the active benevolence of that admirable establishment we may attribute a ten year's peace, free from the alarm and havoc of typhus fever in London, and the more cleanly and commodious houses of the present population of the country towns may account for their remaining free from the ravages of contagious fe ver. The |