1557 influenza pandemic
1557 flu pandemic | |
---|---|
Disease | Influenza |
Virus strain | unknown |
Location | Asia, Africa, Europe, Americas |
Date | 1557–1559 |
Deaths | unknown |
In 1557, a pandemic strain of
Asia
According to a European chronicler surnamed Fonseca who wrote Disputat. de Garotillo, the 1557 influenza pandemic first broke out in
Europe
In the summer of 1557 parts of Europe had just suffered outbreaks of plague,[2] typhus,[2] measles,[13] and smallpox[13] when influenza arrived from the Ottoman Empire and North Africa. The flu spread west through Europe aboard merchant ships in the Mediterranean Sea, again taking advantage of trade and pilgrimage routes. Death rates were highest in children, those with preexisting conditions,[14] the elderly,[15] and those who were bled.[16] Outbreaks were particularly severe in communities suffering from food scarcity. The epidemics of fevers and respiratory illness eventually became referred to as the new sickness in England,[2] new acquaintance[9] in Scotland, and coqueluche or simply catarrh by medical historians[17] in the rest of Europe. Because it afflicted entire populations at once in mass outbreaks, some contemporary scholars thought the flu was caused by stars,[11] contaminated vapors brought about by damp weather,[18][11] or the dryness of the air.[19][11] Ultimately the 1557 flu lasted in varying waves of intensity for around four years[7][20] in epidemics that increased European death rates, disrupted the highest levels of society, and frequently spread to other continents.
Ottoman Empire and East Europe
The flu pandemic first reached Europe in 1557 from the
Sicily, Italian States, and the Holy Roman Empire
Influenza arrived in the Kingdom of Sicily in June[22] at Palermo,[4] whence it spread across the island. Church services, Sicilian social life, and the economy were disrupted as the flu sickened a large portion of the population. The Sicilian Senate asked a well-known Palermitan physician named Giovanni Filippo Ingrassia to help combat the epidemic in an advisory capacity, which he accepted. Ingrassia approached epidemic responses as a collaboration between healthcare and government officials, and was the first known "health care professional" to propose that a system for monitoring epidemics of contagious catarrhal fevers would aid in early detection and epidemic control.[4]
Flu spread quickly from Sicily into the Kingdom of Naples on the lower part of the Italian Peninsula, moving upward along the coastline. In Urbino, Venetian court poet Bernardo Tasso, his son Torquato, and the occupants of a monastery fell sick "from hand to hand"[23] with influenza for four to five days. Though the epidemic left the entire city of Urbino ill,[23] most individuals recovered without complications. By the time Bernardo had traveled to northern Italy on August 3 the disease had already spread into the rest of Europe.[23] In Lombardy there was an outbreak of "suffocating catarrh" that could quickly become fatal. The symptoms were so severe that some members of the population suspected a mass poisoning had occurred.[24]
Kingdom of France
French physician and medical historian Lazare Rivière documented an anonymous physician's descriptions of a flu outbreak[22] occurring in the Languedoc region of France in July 1557.[26] The disease, often called coqueluche by the French,[27][28] caused a severe outbreak in Nîmes that featured a fast onset of symptoms like headaches, fevers, loss of appetite, fatigue, and intense coughing.[29][27][22] Most of those who died from the disease did so on the fourth day, but some succumbed up to 11 days after first symptoms.[27][22] Across Languedoc influenza had a high mortality rate, with up to 200 people per day dying in Toulouse at the height of the region's epidemic.[30] Italian physician Francisco Vallerioli, known as François Valleriola, was a witness to the epidemic in France and described the 1557 flu's symptoms as featuring a fever, severe headache, intense coughing, shortness of breath, chills, hoarseness, and expulsion of phlegm after 7 to 14 days.[24][26] French lawyer Étienne Pasquier wrote that the disease began with a severe pain in the head and a 12- to 15-hour fever[31] while sufferers' noses "ran like a fountain."[32] Paris saw its judiciary disrupted when the Paris Law Court suspended its meetings to slow the spread of flu.[33] Medical historian Charles-Jacques Saillant described this influenza as especially fatal to those who were treated with bleeding[14] and very dangerous to children.[29]
Kingdoms of England and Scotland
The 1557 influenza severely impacted the British Isles. British medical historian
Influenza significantly contributed to England's unusually high death rates for 1557–58:
Influenza returned in 1558. Contemporary historian
New waves of "agues" and fevers were recorded in England into 1559. These repeated outbreaks proved unusually deadly for populations already suffering from extensive rains and poor harvests. From 1557 to 1559 the nation's population contracted by 2%.[46] The sheer numbers of people dying from epidemics and famine in England caused economic inflation to flatten out.[47]
In the late 1550s the English language had not yet developed a proper name for the flu, despite previous epidemics. Thus 1557's epidemic was either described as a "plague" (like many epidemics with notable mortality), "ague" (most generally) or "new disease" in England. "The sweat" was one name used to describe the usually deadly, flu-like fevers and "agues" plaguing the English countryside from 1557 to 1558, despite no reliable records of sweating sickness after 1551. Doctor John Jones, a prominent 16th Century London physician, refers in his book Dyall of Agues to a "great sweat" during the reign of Mary I of England.[2] After the 1557 pandemic English nicknames for the flu began to appear in letters, like "the new disease" in England and "the newe acquaintance" in Scotland. When the entire royal court of Mary, Queen of Scots was struck down with influenza in Edinburgh in November 1562, Lord Randolph described the outbreak as "a new disease, that is common in this town, called here 'the newe acquaintance,' which passed also through her whole court, neigh sparing lord, lady, nor damoysell, not so much as either French or English. It is a pain in their heads that have it, and a soreness in their stomachs, with a great cough, that remaineth with some longer with other short time, as it findeth apt bodies for the nature of the disease...There was not an appearance of danger, nor manie that died of the disease, except some old folks."[48] Mary Stuart herself spent six days sick in her bedchambers.[15][6]
Habsburg Netherlands
Spain and Portugal
Spain was widely and severely impacted by influenza, which chroniclers recognized as a highly contagious catarrhal fever.
Cases expanded exponentially as merchants, pilgrims, and other travelers leaving Madrid transported the virus to cities and towns across the country. According to King Phillip II's doctor Luis de Mercado, "All the population was attacked the same day, and the same time of day. It was catarrh, marked by fever of the double tertian type, with such pernicious symptoms that many died."[58] The season's poor harvests and hunger in the Spanish population,[59] as well as negligent medical care, likely contributed to the severity of the influenza pandemic in Spain. Flu symptoms could be so intense that the region's physicians often distinguished it from other contagious, seasonal pneumonias that spread from East Europe.[60] Sixteenth century Spaniards frequently referred to any mass outbreak of deadly disease generically as a pestilencia,[61] and "plagues" are recognized as occurring in Valencia[62] and Granada[63] during the years 1557–59, despite pathological records of true plague (like descriptions of buboes) occurring in the area at the time being scant.
Influenza hit the Kingdom of Portugal at the same time as it spread throughout Spain, with an impact that spread across the Atlantic Ocean. The kingdom had just suffered food shortages due to 1556-57's poor harvest,[64] which would have exacerbated the effects of the flu on hungry patients. A violent storm had just hit Portugal and severely damaged the Palace of Enxobregas, and in following with attributing outbreaks of influenza to the weather Portuguese historians like Ignácio Barbosa-Machado attributed the epidemic in the kingdom to the storm with little opposition. Barbosa-Machado referred to 1557 as the "anno de catarro."[65]
The Americas
There are records of the New World eventually being reached by the flu in 1557, brought to the Spanish and Portuguese Empires by sailors from Europe.[21] Influenza arrived in Central America in 1557,[66] likely aboard Spanish ships sailing to New Spain. During that year there were epidemics of flu recorded in the south Atlantic states, Gulf area, and Southwest.[67] The Native American Cherokee appear to have been affected during this wave,[68] and it may have spread along newly established trade routes between Spanish colonies in the New World.
The flu also reached South America. Anthropologist
Africa
Influenza attacked Africa through the Ottoman Empire, which by 1557 was expanding its territories in the northern and eastern parts of the continent. Egypt, which had been conquered by the Ottoman Empire around 40 years prior, became an access point for influenza to travel south through the Red Sea along shipping routes. The pandemic's most memorable effects on the Ottoman army in Africa are recorded as part of the 1559 wave.[citation needed]
Abyssinian Empire and Habesh Eyalet
The Kingdom of Portugal had supported the
Medicine and treatments
Most physicians of the time subscribed to the theory of
Identification as influenza
The 1557 pandemic's nature as a worldwide, highly-contagious respiratory disease with fast onset of flu-like symptoms has led many physicians, from medical historians like Charles Creighton to modern epidemiologists, to consider the causative disease as influenza.[1] "Well documented descriptions from medical observers"[1] who witnessed the effects of the pandemic as it spread through populations have been reviewed by numerous medical historians in the centuries since. Contemporary physicians to the 1557 flu, like Ingrassia, Valleriola, Dodoens, and Mercado, described symptoms like severe coughing, fever, myalgia, and pneumonia that all occurred within a short period of time and led to death in days if a case was to be fatal.[50][24][58] Infections became so widespread in countries that influences like the weather, stars, and mass poisoning were blamed by observers for the outbreaks, a reoccurring pattern in influenza epidemics that has contributed to the disease's name. Prior to greater research being conducted into influenza in the 19th century, some medical historians considered the descriptions of epidemic "angina" from 1557 to be scarlet fever, whooping cough, and diphtheria. But the most striking features of scarlet fever and diphtheria, like rashes or pseudomembranes, remain unmentioned by any of the 1557 pandemic's observers and the first recognized whooping cough epidemic is a localized outbreak in Paris from 1578.[75] These illnesses can resemble the flu in their early stages but pandemic influenza is distinguished by its fast-moving, unrestricted epidemics of severe respiratory disease affecting all ages with widespread infections and mortalities.[citation needed]
References
- ^ PMID 21155080.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Creighton, Charles (1891). A History of Epidemics in Britain - The type of sickness in 1558. Cambridge, England: The University Press. pp. 403–407. Archived from the original on 2022-10-07. Retrieved 2023-03-18.
- JSTOR 2276917.
- ^ a b c d Alibrandi, Rosemarie (2018). "When early modern Europe caught the flu. A scientific account of pandemic influenza in sixteenth century Sicily". Medicina Historica. 2: 19–26.
- PMID 19618626.
- ^ a b Creighton, Charles (1894). A History of Epidemics in Britain: From the extinction of plague to the present time. Cambridge, England: Oxford University Press. pp. 307–308.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-521-89221-6.
- ^ Institute of Medicine (US) Forum on Microbial Threats; Knobler, Stacey L.; Mack, Alison; Mahmoud, Adel; Lemon, Stanley M. (2005). The Story of Influenza. National Academies Press (US). Archived from the original on 2020-12-23. Retrieved 2020-05-16.
- ^ a b The American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children. New York: W. Wood & Company. 1919. p. 231. Archived from the original on 2021-09-11. Retrieved 2020-05-16.
- ^ Pierson, A. L.; Flint, J. B.; Bartlett, E. (1834). The Medical Magazine. Boston: Allan & Ticknor. p. 92.
- ^ a b c d Thompson, Theophilus (1852). Annals of Influenza Or Epidemic Catarrhal Fever in Great Britain from 1510 to 1837. Sydenham Society. p. 101. Archived from the original on 2021-02-25. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
- ^ Lal, Kishori Saran (1973). Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000-1800. Research [Publications in Social Sciences]. p. 51.
- ^ a b c d SCHWEICH, Heinrich; HECKER, Justus Friedrich Carl (1836). Die Influenza. Ein historischer und ätiologischer Versuch ... Mit einer Vorrede von ... J. F. C. Hecker (in German). pp. 59–60.
- ^ a b Hopkirk, Arthur F. (1914). Influenza: Its History, Nature, Cause, and Treatment. New York: Walter Scott Publishing Company. p. 31.
- ^ ISBN 9780822977858.
- ^ a b A System of practical medicine v. 1, 1885. Philadelphia: Lea Bros. & Company. 1885. p. 854.
- ^ Immerman, H.; von Jurgenson, Th.; Liebermeister, C.; Lenhartz, H.; Sticker, G. (1902). Moore, John (ed.). Encyclopedia of Practical Medicine. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders. p. 543.
- ^ a b Webster, Noah (1800). A Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases: With the Principal Phenomena of the Physical World, which Precede and Accompany Them, and Observations Deduced from the Facts Stated ... London: G.G. and J. Robinson, Paternoster-Row. p. 131.
- ^ a b Ozanam, Jean Antoine François (1835). Historie médicale générale et particulière des maladies épidémiques, contagieuses et épizootiques, qui ont régné en Europe depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu'a nos jours (in French). Paris: Chez tous les libraires pour la médecine. p. 186. Archived from the original on 2021-09-11. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
- ^ Journal des connaissances médico-chirurgicales: 1837, Sém. 2 (in French). Bureau du Journal. 1837. p. 95.
- ^ a b c Parkin, John (1880). Epidemiology; or, The remote cause of epidemic diseases in the animal and in the vegetable creation. London: J. and A. Churchill. p. 36. Archived from the original on 2021-09-11. Retrieved 2020-03-24.
- ^ a b c d e f g Finkler, Ditmar (1898). "Influenza". Twentieth Century Practice - an International Encyclopedia of Modern Medical Science by Leading Authorities of Europe and America. 15. William Wood and Company: 12–13 – via Google Books.
- ^ a b c d Corradi, Alfonso (5 June 1879). "La Enfermità di Toquato Tasso". Memorie del Reale Istituto Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere: Classe di Scienze Matematiche e Naturali (in Italian). 15. TIP. BERNARDONI DI C. REBESCHINI E. C.: 331 – via Google Books.
- ^ ISSN 0250-4952.
- ISBN 978-0-226-47324-6.
- ^ a b Dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales (in French). Paris: Asselin. 1877. p. 332. Archived from the original on 2021-09-09. Retrieved 2020-11-04.
- ^ a b c Delorme, Raige (1837). "GRIPPE - IV. Histoire et Literature". Encyclographie des Sciences Médicales. Répertoire Général de Ces Sciences, Au XIXe Siècle. 13. Brussels, Belgium: Établissement Encyclographique: 258–259. Archived from the original on 2021-09-11. Retrieved 2020-05-28 – via Google Books.
- ^ Brouardel, Paul; Agustin, Gilbert; Girode, Joseph (1895). Traité de médecine et de thérapeutique (in French). Paris: B. Ballière et Fils. p. 363.
- ^ a b Wood, T.F.C. (1844). The Epidemics of the Middle Ages. London: G. Woodfall and Von. pp. 221–222.
- ^ Cayla, Jean Mament (1839). Histoire de la ville de Toulouse depuis sa fondation jusqu'à nos jours, publiée sous la direction de M. J. M. Cayla et Perrin-Paviot. Ornée de douze gravures, etc (in French). Toulouse. p. 481. Archived from the original on 2021-09-11. Retrieved 2020-04-29.
- ^ a b Deschambre, A. (1873). Dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales: Cas - Cép (in French). Masson. p. 241.
- ^ Nothnagel, Hermann (1905). Nothnagel's Encyclopedia of practical medicine. v. 10, 1910. Philadelphia and London: W.B. Saunders & Company. p. 602.
- ^ Bloss, Jas. R. (July 1920). "Influenza - Past and Present". West Virginia Medical Journal. 15: 287–288.
- ^ a b Allbutt, M.D., Clifford (1907). Influenza. p. 105.
- ^ "The Fall of Calais | History Today". www.historytoday.com. Archived from the original on 2021-06-29. Retrieved 2020-04-30.
- ISBN 978-1-85285-520-8.
- ISBN 978-1-118-53222-5.
- ISBN 978-0-85115-585-2.
- ISBN 978-0-435-32303-5.
- ^ Thompson, Theophilus (1852). Annals of Influenza Or Epidemic Catarrhal Fever in Great Britain from 1510 to 1837. Sydenham Society. p. 8.
- ^ a b Starky, David (2002). "Edward and Mary: The Unknown Tudors". Youtube. Event occurs at 46:20-46:25. Archived from the original on 2020-06-18. Retrieved 2020-04-17.
- ^ Nix, Elizabeth. "8 Things You Might Not Know about Mary I". HISTORY. Archived from the original on 2021-08-18. Retrieved 2020-05-30.
- ^ a b c Stow, John (1575). A Summarie of the Chronicles of England, from the first coming of Brute into this land, unto this present yeare of Christ 1575 ... Corrected and enlarged, etc. B.L. Richard Cottle and Henry Binneman. p. 501. Archived from the original on 2021-09-11. Retrieved 2021-01-12.
- PMID 14074186.
- ^ Mémorial de Chronologie, d'Histoire Industrielle, d'Èconomie Politique, de Biographie, etc (in French). Paris: Chez Verdière, Libraire. 1830. p. 863.
- ISBN 978-90-04-09760-5.
- ISBN 978-0-7188-4816-3.
- ^ Coburn, H. (1843). Letters of Mary, Queen of Scots: Now First Published from the Originals, Collected from Various Sources, Private as Well as Public, with an Historical Introduction and Notes. H. Colburn. p. 349. Archived from the original on 2021-09-11. Retrieved 2020-05-21.
- ^ Colin, Léon (1879). Traité des maladies épidémiques: origine, évolution, prophylaxie (in French). Paris: B. Ballière et Fills. p. 496.
- ^ a b Hillier, M.D, Thomas (January 29, 1859). "On Diphterite". The Medical Times and Gazette, A Journal of Medical Science, Literature, Criticism, and News. 18. London: 107. Archived from the original on September 11, 2021. Retrieved May 28, 2020.
- ^ Twentieth century practice. New York: Sampson Low, Marston. 1898. p. 13.
- ^ Torfs, Louis (1859). Fastes des calamites publiques survenues dans les Pays-Bas et particulierement en Belgique depuis les temps les plus recules jusqu'a nos jours, Epidemies; famines; inondations (in French). Paris: Libraire de P. Lenthielleux. p. 188. Archived from the original on 2021-09-11. Retrieved 2020-05-31.
- ^ The Dublin Journal of Medical Science. Dublin: Fannin & Company. 1880. p. 98. Archived from the original on 2021-09-11. Retrieved 2020-06-12.
- ^ Hart, Ernest, ed. (1880). British Medical Journal. London: British Medical Association. p. 159.
- ^ "Influenza in America During the 16th Century". Bulletin of the History of Medicine. 8: 297. 1940.
- ISBN 9780598840387.
- ^ Allbutt, M.D., Clifford (1907). Influenza. p. 128.
- ^ a b c Culbertson, M.D., J. C., ed. (1890). The Cincinnati Lancet-clinic. Cincinnati: J.C. Culbertson. p. 52. Archived from the original on 2021-09-11. Retrieved 2020-03-25.
- ISBN 978-1-317-75500-5.
- ^ Webster, Noah (1800). A Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases: With the Principal Phenomena of the Physical World, which Precede and Accompany Them, and Observations Deduced from the Facts Stated ... London: G.G. and J. Robinson, Paternoster-Row. p. 421. Archived from the original on 2021-09-11. Retrieved 2020-04-26.
- ISBN 978-0-691-00827-1.
- ^ "Las epidemias de Valencia y la Virgen de los Desamparados". El Periódico de Aquí (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 2020-05-24. Retrieved 2020-05-31.
- from the original on 2021-09-11. Retrieved 2020-05-31.
- ISBN 978-1-134-77758-7.
- ^ Annaes das sciencias e lettras (in Brazilian Portuguese). Lisbon: Typographia da Academia. 1857. p. 302. Archived from the original on 2021-09-11. Retrieved 2020-06-07.
- ISBN 978-0-521-23223-4.
- ISBN 978-1-58765-068-0.
- ISBN 978-0-8032-9410-3.
- ISBN 978-92-3-303151-7.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-292-74860-6.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-521-62730-6.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-317-01974-9.
- ^ a b Welch, Sidney R. (1949). South Africa Under John III, 1521-1557. Juta. p. 244.
- ^ F. Flick, M.D., Lawrence (1892). "The Treatment of Epidemic Influenza by Rest and Stimulants". Proceedings of the Philadelphia County Medical Society. 13: 40 – via Google Books.
- ^ Whooping Cough: Essential Facts Concerning Whooping Cough, Its Prevention and Treatment with Appropriate Vaccines. Indianapolis, Indiana: Eli Lilly & Company. 1920. p. 3.