Disease 2, smallpox and scurvy

 

Plague doctor

It has transpired that a man died from bubonic plague in the hospital on Friday. He was a German sailor, 18 years of age, named William Eppstein, and stated before his death that he had deserted from the crew of the ship Formosa, which arrived at Port Adelaide from New York on November 12 last, and on her arrival was granted pratique by the assistant health officer. Some days later a number of her sailors deserted and disappeared inland. During the voyage of the vessel a number of cases of sickness occurred, but the captain considered them too trifling in character to log them.

— Australian Town and Country Journal, 20 January 1900, 16.

 

I thought it prudent to isolate a wharf laborer at quarantine for observation. I regret to say that the proofs by culture and by inoculation furnished this morning by Dr. Frank Tidswell are complete, and that the disease is plague have no doubt the patient was inoculated by a flea, of which there is visible evidence. It may be therefore that for the present no other human beings are infected. The epidemiological enquiry is being actively prosecuted, but the clinical and bacteriological account will be forwarded as soon as possible. The case is extremely mild. Household isolated with patient. House closed.
Sydney Morning Herald, 26 January 1900, 3.

 

I am going to tell you a thing that will make you wish yourself here. The small-pox, so fatal and so general among us, is here entirely harmless, by the invention of ingrafting, which is the term they give it. There is a set of old women who make it their business to perform the operation every autumn, in the month of September, when the great heat is abated. People send to one another to know if any of their family has a mind to have the small-pox … There is no example of any one who has died in it; and you may believe I am well satisfied of the safety of this experiment, since I intend to try it on my dear little son.
— Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Letter to Mrs. S.C., dated Adrianople, April 1 (old style), 1717.

 

May 6 Mrs Chandler brought to bed of a daughter at the parsonage-house.

Sept. 21 Mrs Clement and six of her children, four of which are to be inoculated, and Mrs Chandler, and her two children, the youngest of which is also to undergo the same operation, are retired to the Harteley great house. Servants and all, some of which are to be inoculated also, they make 14 in family.

Sept. 27 The inoculated at Harteley sicken.

Oct. 13 Mrs Chandler returns home from the Harteley inoculation.

Dec. 29 On this day Mrs Clements was delivered of a boy.
— Gilbert White (1720 – 1793), Journal, (1790), MIT Press, 1970.

 

[While we mean ‘vaccination’ when we say ‘inoculation’, clearly White is referring to the older-style ‘variolation’, deliberately infecting their young with smallpox. It was eight years later that Jenner announced his vaccination to the world. Soon, it was known everywhere.]

In April 1795, a general inoculation taking place here, Merret was inoculated with his family; so that a period of twenty-five years had elapsed from his having the cowpox to this time. However, though variolous matter was repeatedly inserted into his arm, I found it impracticable to infect him with it.
— Edward Jenner (1749 – 1823), ‘An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae’, 1798, quoted in Rook, The Origins and Growth of Biology, Penguin.

 

Case II. Sarah Portlock … was infected … twenty-seven years ago. In the year 1792, conceiving herself, from this circumstance, secure from the infection of the smallpox, she nursed one of her children who had accidentally caught the disease, but no indisposition ensued.
— Edward Jenner (1749 – 1823), ‘An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae’, 1798, quoted in Rook, The Origins and Growth of Biology, Penguin.

 

Case XVII. The more accurately to observe the progress of the infection, I selected a healthy boy, about eight years old, for the purpose of inoculation for the cowpox… . it was inserted on the fourteenth of May, 1796… .

In order to ascertain whether the boy, after feeling so slight an affection of the system from the cowpox virus, was secure from the contagion of the smallpox, he was inoculated the first of July following with variolous matter, immediately taken from a pustule… no disease followed.
— Edward Jenner (1749 – 1823), ‘An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae’, 1798, quoted in Rook, The Origins and Growth of Biology, Penguin.

 

In May, the blessings of vaccination were introduced into the settlement, and all the young children were inoculated with success; but unfortunately, by some means as yet unaccounted for, the virtue has been lost, and the colony has been left once more without a protection from that most awful of disorders, the small-pox; of the fatal consequences of which the natives have more than once been afforded the most dreadful of all disorders, their loathsome carcases having been found, while this disorder was prevalent amongst them, lying on the beach, and on the rocks. In fact, such is the terror of this disorder amongst these untutored sons of nature, that, on its appearance, they forsake those who are infected with it, leaving them to die, without a friend at hand, or assistance to smooth the aspect of death, and fly into the thickest of the woods.
— David Dickinson Mann, The Present Picture of New South Wales 1811. London: John Booth, 1811, and Sydney: John Ferguson Pty Ltd, 1979, 14.

 

Sir William Peel, the Bayard of our modern chivalry, who risked his life so freely in the batteries before Sebastopol, and had so many hairbreadth escapes, that he used to say, ‘the bullet was not cast which was to kill him;’ after distinguishing himself as nobly in India, has fallen a victim to smallpox.
— Fanny (Mrs Henry) Duberly, Campaigning Experiences in Rajpootana and Central India during the Suppression of the Mutiny, 1857-1858, London, 1859, 146.

 

The virus used for vaccination against smallpox has an obscure history. Nominally, it is a descendant of Jenner’s cow-pox, but most virologists believe that it is a much mutated derivative of human smallpox virus that developed an acceptably low level of virulence during passage from human to human in the early 19th century.
— Sir Macfarlane Burnet, (1899 – 1984), Walter and Eliza Hall Institute 1915 – 1965, Melbourne University Press, 1971.

On Monday, the 7th of January, we again cast anchor off Mitindy … the Captain-Major sent a man on shore to bring off a supply of oranges which were much desired by our sick.
— Vasco da Gama (c. 1469 – 1525), quoted in Kenneth J. Carpenter, The History of Scurvy and Vitamin C, Cambridge UP, 1986, 2.

 

We ate biscuit which was no longer biscuit, but powder of biscuits swarming with worms, for they had eaten the good. It stank strongly of the urine of rats. We drank yellow water which had been putrid for many days. We also ate some oxhides which covered the top of the mainyard to prevent the yard from chafing the shrouds, and which had become exceedingly hard because of the sun, rain and wind. We left them in the sea for four or five days, and then placed them for a few moments on top of the embers, and so ate them … the gums of both the lower and upper teeth of some of our men swelled, so that they could not eat under any circumstances and therefore died.
— Antonio Pigafetta (1491 – c.1534), quoted in Boorstin, The Discoverers, 265.

 

There was great joy amongst my company; and many, with the sight of the oranges and lemons, seemed to recover heart. This is a wonderful secret of the power and wisdom of God, that hath hidden so great and unknown virtue in this fruit, to be a certain remedy for this infirmity …
— Sir Richard Hawkins (c. 1562 – 1622 ) and his brush with scurvy in his Voyage into the South Sea, in the year 1593.

 

Some Years ago, ere time and taste
Had turn’d our parish topsy-turvy,
When Darnel Park was Darnel Waste,
And roads as little known as scurvy …
— Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802 – 1839) ‘The Vicar’, quoted in The Oxford Book of English Verse.

 

I have just observed, in the newspapers, the melancholy account of the wreck of the convict ship George III. (the first instance of a male convict ship having been lost). Great sickness, principally scurvy, appears to have prevailed on board, which the surgeon attributes to the scanty distribution of rations, and the substitution of cocoa for oatmeal. I am inclined to think, however, that if sickness now prevails in an increased ratio, it may be ascribed to the circumstance of the prisoners being embarked soon after their conviction, instead of being, as formerly, employed, for a long time, in the dock-yards, where, their habits being regular, their constitutions became improved.
— Wilson, T. B., Narrative of a Voyage Round the World. London: Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper, 1835, London: Dawson’s of Pall Mall, 1968, 334 (n.)

 

Convict ships now generally make the voyage direct; but, formerly, they used to touch at some port — i.e., Madeira, Teneriffe, Porto Praya, Rio de Janeiro, or the Cape of Good Hope. I consider it of importance, as regards the health of those entrusted to my charge, to touch somewhere during the voyage; and, whenever I have done so there has been no sickness in the ship — whereas, when I have not done so, a strong tendency to scurvy manifests itself among the prisoners, usually after passing the Cape of Good Hope; which, occasionally towards the end of the voyage, assumes a very insidious and intractable form, when, consequently, the surgeon has no sinecure. This circumstance I have remarked, as occurring more frequently of late years. The cases, however, that terminate fatally, are but few; and the emaciated soon recover their wonted vigour on the healthy Australian shores.

The average number of deaths, on the passage, is under two per cent.; no great mortality, when it is considered, that the constitutions of many of the prisoners have been greatly impaired by continued courses of irregularity and dissipation.
— Wilson, T. B., Narrative of a Voyage Round the World. London: Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper, 1835, London: Dawson’s of Pall Mall, 1968, pages 333-334.

 

The Sour Krout the Men at first would not eate untill I put in practice a Method I never once knew to fail with seamen, and this was to have some of it dress’d every Day for the Cabbin Table, and permitted all of the Officers without exception to make use of it and left it to the option of the Men either to take as much as they pleased or none at all; but this practice was not continued above a week before I found it necessary to put every one on board to an Allowance, for such are the tempers and dispossissions of Seamen in general that … the Moment the see their Superiors set a Value upon it, it becomes the finest stuff in the World, and the inventer a damn’d honest fellow.
— James Cook (1728 – 1779), Journal.

 

About a fortnight ago my gums swelled, and some small pimples rose on the inside of my mouth, which threatened to become ulcers; I then flew to the lemon juice … I took nearly six ounces a day … in less than a week my gums became as firm as ever …
— James Cook (1728 – 1779), Endeavour Journal.

 

Because he did not know the actual structure of his molecule, Szent-Györgyi wanted to call it ‘ignose’ or even ‘godnose’, but the editor of the Biochemical Journal objected, and he had to give it the alternate name of ‘hexuronic acid’.
— Kenneth J. Carpenter, The History of Scurvy and Vitamin C, Cambridge University Press, 1986, 190.