Influenza in the early 19th Century
Excerpts from Matthew Tomlinson’s Diaries. He lived at Doghouse Farm near Lupset. Wakefield Local Studies Library hold three of his detailed and interesting diaries. Spelling and punctuation as in the original.
1833.
May 5th The state of the weather has now took a favourable change, and vegetation sings. – An uncommon complaint now prevails amongst Men; yet not in many cases, fatal; some are more, and some are less affected by it; in most cases the patient is confined about a week; the faculty give it the appellation of Influenzy – it in most cases goes thro’ the family: In a neibouring boarding school there are 24 boys, and the Master, and Mrs at one and the same time. – The cause is supposed to be, the very cold, wet, and unnatural Spring we have had. – Our family have hitherto escaped it: Health is a great blessing. –
1837
Feby 5th The morning is clear and cold, perhaps may be calculated to give a check to the prevailing disorder now vissiting all classes of Men, called by the faculty, the Influenzy: – proves very fatal to people advanced in years: numbers of whome are gone, of whome I had some general knowledge: – perhaps the most notifyed, where Geo. Kitchen the Undertaker, – “who long has watch’d the sick-mans door”, he has assisted in puting down many of his fellows in the earth, and carrying them out of the camp – this traffick he will now resign to some trusty brother of the trade; he has lived 70 years in the land of mortality, and upon a moderate calculation, has laughed away fifteen or twenty of that number, – as all his gestures seem’d a joke: – if he conversed rationaly, or seriously, it was done in slight laughter, – if nonsenceically, – with loud bursts of joyous agony.