INFLUENZAS AND EPIDEMIC AGUES.
Epidemic agues are joined in the same chapter with influenzas for the
reason that they can hardly be separated in the earlier part of the
history. Until 1743 the name influenza was not used at all in this
country. The thing itself can be identified clearly enough in certain
instances from the earliest times. But there are periods, such as 1657-59,
1678-79, and 1727-29 when short waves of epidemic catarrhs or catarrhal
fevers came in the midst of longer waves of epidemic agues, “hot agues,”
or intermittents, the whole being called by the people “the new disease,”
or “the new ague,” while by physicians, such as Willis and Sydenham, they
were taken to be the distinguishable constituent parts of one and the same
epidemic constitution. The last period in which epidemic agues were so
recognised and named in England was from 1780 to 1785; and in the midst of
that also there occurred an epidemic catarrh--the “influenza” of the year