Tag: Epidemics

A Rule and Instruction to Preserve Such as Be in Health, from the Infection

The plague hit London in 1603, and of course writers and printers were not slow to take advantage of the market for information that would prevent or cure the plague. In a blackletter tract, a physician explains the sound principle that you should stay away from infected persons as much as possible. Meanwhile, you can prevent the infection by making the world around you smell better. (Paragraph divisions have been added here; in the original there are none.)

When as (by the will of GOD) the contagion of the Plague is gotten into any place, Citie, or Countrey; we ought to have an especiall regard of the generall good, and by all meanes to study for their preservation who are in health, least they fall into such inconveniencie. First of all, therefore it behooveth every man to have speciall care that he frequent not any places or persons infected, neither that hee suffer such to breath upon him: but as Galen hath learnedly advised, in his Booke De Differentijs Frebrium, Chap. 2. Estrange himselfe as farre as hym lyeth, from their societie. The first and chiefest remedie then, is to chaunge the place, flie farre and returne late: Hipocrates, likewise in his Booke De Natura humana, saith: that wee ought to forsake the place whereas a generall sicknesse rangeth, according to the common Proverbe, Cito, longe, tarde.

And if necessitie constraineth us to frequent the infected, (either to be assistant to our friends, or otherwise:) every man ought to demeane himself in such sort that the sick mans breath doo not attaint him: which may very easily be done, if a man have the skill to choose & take the winde that properly bloweth towards the sicke & infected, and not from the infected to the healthfull: And therefore in that case the healthfull ought to keepe themselves under, not over the winde.

The first part of preservation, is to purifie and purge the ayre from all evill vapours, sentes, stench, corruption, putrifaction, and evill qualitie. For which cause, it is necessary to make good fumes in our houses, of sweet and wholesome wood, as Rosemarie, Iuniper, and Lawrell, or Bayes, and to perfume the whole house and chambers with the fume of Rosemary, Iuniper the parings of Apples, Storax, Beniamin, Incence, dried Roses, Lavender, and such like, both Evening and Morning. It is not amisse likewise at every corner of the street, (at least twice in the week) to make cleare and quicke Bonefires to consume the malignant vapours of the ayre, according as Acron the great Phisitian, commaunded to be done during the mortall plague in Greece: As Paulus Aegineta testifieth in his second Booke, Chap. 35.

It is good also to wear sweet savors and perfumes about us, such as in Winter time, are Marcorame, Rosemarie, Storax, Beniamin, or to make a Pomander after this sort that ensueth, and to weare it about us to smell too upon all opertunities.

Take of the flowers of red Roses, of Violets, of Buglos, of each half a little handfull, of the three Sanders, of each a Dramme, of the rootes of Angelica, Gentian, and Zedoary, of each four scruples; of white Encens, Cloves, Nutmegs, Calamus, Aromaticus, of each a dram, of Storax, Calumit, and red Beniamin, of each a dramme and a halfe, of orientall Muske a scruple, of Amber-greece halfe a scruple, of Ladaum infused in Rose-water one ounce, mixe all these together in Rose-water where in the Gum Dragacanth hath beene infused, and with a little of Rose-vinegar make a paste, of which you may forme certaine rounde Pomanders, to weare about your necke, and smell unto continually.

Or take of Rose-water three ounces, of white Vinegar, of Roses ij. ounces, of white Wine, or pure Malmosie two spoonfuls, of the powder of Cloves, of the roote of Angelica and Storax of each halfe a dramme, mixe them all together, and with this liquor it shall not be amisse to wash your hands, bedeaw your forehead & nostrils, and the pulces of your armes, for such an odour and of so wholesome a qualitie, vehemently repulceth the venome that assaileth the heart, and altereth the pestilence of the ayre.

——From A Treatise of the Plague, by Thomas Lodge. London: Edward White and N. L., 1603.

The Insalubrious Consequences of Lack of Ventilation

Pestilential diseases of all sorts are engendered by the close, fetid air of English dwellings, says a magazine writer of the 1830s. This is a fairly clear statement of the miasma theory of infection—which, in the absence of knowledge of bacteria and viruses, was a good approximation of the truth. Bad smells indicate bad sanitation, which is certainly a factor in spreading disease.

The pure open air is certainly the most healthy fluid that man can breathe; and this is the reason why a residence in the country has so benignant an effect upon the human frame in general, when attended with all the comforts of refined life. The air in cities is usually impregnated with particles of a more or less deleterious nature; still this air is not so injurious as that of crowded and heated rooms, where the breath of one human being is inhaled as the vital atmosphere of another, with what effect it is easy to judge.

In the dwellings of the poor, where a family of ten or twelve persons sometimes resides in a single room, whilst, perhaps, a small house contains forty or fifty inmates, the windows are generally closed. Not a breath of air is admitted except during the dog-days, and then the external atmosphere is too stagnant and sultry to be of much use. All the offices of the family, including their cookery, their meals, and their repose, are carried on in this single room, the air of which, impregnated with azote from the living occupants, and with fetor from the garments and fragments of food, engenders those pestilential diseases which sometimes break out with irresistible fury in some of the most densely populated districts of the metropolis.

In the dwellings of the inferior tradesmen the same evil prevails. Though the houses are not so thickly inhabited as those of the humbler class, still there are sufficient numbers, added to the inveterate national uncleanliness of body which we indicated in a preceding paper, render these places of residence extremely insalubrious. A breath of air is seldom admitted into the bed-rooms, in which there is always a close, fetid smell. In the sitting-rooms the same evil is perceptible, and the offensiveness of the smell, on entering them from the open air, is oftentimes overpowering. In winter, a very small sitting-room, which serves for a large family to sit and to take their meals in, is kept hermetically closed, with a blazing fire in the grate. The room is soon heated to excess, and its atmosphere, which has been breathed over and over again, impregnated with carbon. A delicate girl, perhaps, leaves this oven for a moment, and, without any gradation, plunges into a pure and cold, or perhaps into a damp, cold atmosphere. What is the probable consequence?—inflammatory action in the lungs, tuberculous deposit, and death. And yet all this might have been avoided by ventilation.

The dwellings of the wealthier classes are not exempt from the same visitations, arising from the same causes. Though there is a freer circulation of air, and a more equal temperature in their vast apartments, still in their parties and entertainments the want of ventilation is severely felt. There seems to be a dread of admitting any external air into a suite of rooms crowded with company; and when a sense of suffocation actually forces some panting guest to open a window, an outcry is raised as loud as if the baneful blast of the simoom, from the African desert, were about to invade this sanctuary of British beauty and fashion. No heed is taken of the consequences of breathing heated air; no account is rendered of the death-chill likely to fall upon the young and lovely, when from the impure they plunge into the pure atmospheric fluid; no consequence is dreaded from the pale and haggard phantom that hovers over each scene of festive enjoyment, and hurls its ice-bolt of destruction at the fairest of our daughters: reckless do mothers expose these tender budding flowers to the pestilential blast, until consumption has fixed its deadly pangs upon the fair bosom of her who yesterday shone as the brightest ornament of an admiring circle, and to-day sinks into a premature grave.

——From The Magazine of Domestic Economy, Vol. II (1837).