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Java® All-in-One For Dummies®, 5th Edition
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street,
Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New
Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
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Java® All-in-One For
Dummies®
To view this book's Cheat Sheet, simply go to
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Search box.

Table of Contents
Cover
Introduction
About This Book
Foolish Assumptions
Icons Used in This Book
Beyond the Book
Where to Go from Here
Book 1: Java Basics
Chapter 1: Welcome to Java
What Is Java, and Why Is It So Great?
Java versus Other Languages
Important Features of the Java Language
On the Downside: Java’s Weaknesses
Java Version Insanity
What’s in a Name?
Chapter 2: Installing and Using Java
Tools
Downloading and Installing the Java Development
Kit
Using Java’s Command-Line Tools
 Using Java Documentation
Chapter 3: Working with TextPad
Downloading and Installing TextPad
Editing Source Files
Compiling a Program
Running a Java Program
Book 2: Programming Basics
Chapter 1: Java Programming Basics
Looking at the Infamous Hello, World! Program
Dealing with Keywords
Working with Statements
Working with Blocks
Creating Identifiers
Crafting Comments
Introducing Object-Oriented Programming
Importing Java API Classes
Chapter 2: Working with Variables
and Data Types
Declaring Variables
Initializing Variables
Using Final Variables (Constants)
Working with Primitive Data Types
Working with Strings
Converting and Casting Numeric Data
Thinking Inside the Box
Understanding Scope
Shadowing Variables
Printing Data with System.out
Getting Input with the Scanner Class
Getting Input with the JOptionPane Class
Using enum to Create Your Own Data Types
Chapter 3: Working with Numbers
and Expressions
 Working with Arithmetic Operators
Dividing Integers
Combining Operators
Using the Unary Plus and Minus Operators
Using Increment and Decrement Operators
Using the Assignment Operator
Using Compound Assignment Operators
Using the Math Class
Formatting Numbers
Recognizing Weird Things about Java Math
Chapter 4: Making Choices
Using Simple Boolean Expressions
Using if Statements
Using Mr. Spock’s Favorite Operators (Logical
Ones, of Course)
Using the Conditional Operator
Comparing Strings
Chapter 5: Going Around in Circles
(Or, Using Loops)
Using Your Basic while Loop
Breaking Out of a Loop
Looping Forever
Using the continue Statement
Running do-while Loops
Validating Input from the User
Using the Famous for Loop
Nesting Your Loops
Chapter 6: Pulling a Switcheroo
Battling else-if Monstrosities
Using the switch Statement
Creating Character Cases
Intentionally Leaving Out a Break Statement
Switching with Strings
 Chapter 7: Adding Some Methods to
Your Madness
The Joy of Methods
The Basics of Making Methods
Methods That Return Values
Methods That Take Parameters
Chapter 8: Handling Exceptions
Understanding Exceptions
Catching Exceptions
Handling Exceptions with a Preemptive Strike
Catching All Exceptions at Once
Displaying the Exception Message
Using a finally Block
Handling Checked Exceptions
Throwing Your Own Exceptions
Catching Multiple Exceptions
Book 3: Object-Oriented Programming
Chapter 1: Understanding Object-
Oriented Programming
What Is Object-Oriented Programming?
Understanding Objects
Understanding the Life Cycle of an Object
Working with Related Classes
Designing a Program with Objects
Diagramming Classes with UML
Chapter 2: Making Your Own Classes
Declaring a Class
Working with Members
Using Getters and Setters
Overloading Methods
Creating Constructors
Finding More Uses for the this Keyword
Using Initializers
Chapter 3: Working with Statics
Understanding Static Fields and Methods
Working with Static Fields
Using Static Methods
Counting Instances
Preventing Instances
Using Static Initializers
Chapter 4: Using Subclasses and
Inheritance
Introducing Inheritance
Creating Subclasses
Overriding Methods
Protecting Your Members
Using this and super in Your Subclasses
Understanding Inheritance and Constructors
Using final
Casting Up and Down
Determining an Object’s Type
Poly What?
Creating Custom Exceptions
Chapter 5: Using Abstract Classes
and Interfaces
Using Abstract Classes
Using Interfaces
More Things You Can Do with Interfaces
Using Default Methods
Chapter 6: Using the Object and Class
Classes
The Mother of All Classes: Object
The toString Method
The equals Method
The clone Method
The Class Class
 Chapter 7: Using Inner Classes,
Anonymous Classes, and Lambda
Expressions
Declaring Inner Classes
Using Static Inner Classes
Using Anonymous Inner Classes
Using Lambda Expressions
Chapter 8: Working with Packages
and the New Java Module System
Working with Packages
Putting Your Classes in a JAR File
Using JavaDoc to Document Your Classes
Using the Java Module System
Book 4: Strings, Arrays, and Collections
Chapter 1: Working with Strings
Reviewing Strings
Using the String Class
Using the StringBuilder and StringBuffer Classes
Using the CharSequence Interface
Chapter 2: Using Arrays
Understanding Arrays
Creating Arrays
Initializing an Array
Using for Loops with Arrays
Solving Homework Problems with Arrays
Using the Enhanced for Loop
Using Arrays with Methods
Using Two-Dimensional Arrays
Working with a Fun but Complicated Example: A
Chessboard
Using the Arrays Class
Chapter 3: Using the ArrayList Class
Understanding the ArrayList Class
 Creating an ArrayList Object
Adding Elements
Accessing Elements
Printing an ArrayList
Using an Iterator
Updating Elements
Deleting Elements
Chapter 4: Using the LinkedList Class
Understanding the LinkedList Class
Creating a LinkedList
Adding Items to a LinkedList
Retrieving Items from a LinkedList
Updating LinkedList Items
Removing LinkedList Items
Chapter 5: Creating Generic
Collection Classes
Why Generics?
Creating a Generic Class
A Generic Stack Class
Using Wildcard-Type Parameters
A Generic Queue Class
Using the Diamond Operator
Chapter 6: Using Bulk Data
Operations with Collections
Looking At a Basic Bulk Data Operation
Looking Closer at the Stream Interface
Using Parallel Streams
Book 5: Programming Techniques
Chapter 1: Programming Threads
Understanding Threads
Creating a Thread
Implementing the Runnable Interface
Creating Threads That Work Together
 Using an Executor
Synchronizing Methods
Creating a Lock
Coping with Threadus Interruptus
Chapter 2: Using Regular Expressions
Creating a Program for Experimenting with Regular
Expressions
Performing Basic Character Matching
Using Regular Expressions in Java Programs
Chapter 3: Using Recursion
Calculating the Classic Factorial Example
Displaying Directories
Writing Your Own Sorting Routine
Chapter 4: Working with Dates and
Times
Pondering How Time is Represented
Picking the Right Date and Time Class for Your
Application
Using the now Method to Create a Date-Time
Object
Using the parse Method to Create a Date-Time
Object
Using the of Method to Create a Date-Time Object
Looking Closer at the LocalDate Class
Extracting Information About a Date
Comparing Dates
Calculating with Dates
Formatting Dates
Looking at a Fun Birthday Calculator
Book 6: JavaFX
Chapter 1: Hello, JavaFX!
Perusing the Possibilities of JavaFX
Looking at a Simple JavaFX Program
Importing JavaFX Packages
 Extending the Application Class
Launching the Application
Overriding the start Method
Creating a Button
Handling an Action Event
Creating a Layout Pane
Making a Scene
Setting the Stage
Examining the Click Counter Program
Chapter 2: Handling Events
Examining Events
Handling Events
Implementing the EventHandler Interface
Handling Events with Inner Classes
Handling Events with Anonymous Inner Classes
Using Lambda Expressions to Handle Events
Chapter 3: Setting the Stage and
Scene Layout
Examining the Stage Class
Examining the Scene Class
Switching Scenes
Creating an Alert Box
Exit, Stage Right
Chapter 4: Using Layout Panes to
Arrange Your Scenes
Working with Layout Panes
Using the HBox Layout
Spacing Things Out
Adding Space with Margins
Adding Space by Growing Nodes
Using the VBox Layout
Aligning Nodes in a Layout Pane
Making Nodes the Same Width
Using the Flow Layout
 Using the Border Layout
Using the GridPane Layout
Chapter 5: Getting Input from the
User
Using Text Fields
Validating Numeric Data
Using Check Boxes
Using Radio Buttons
Looking at a Pizza Order Application
Chapter 6: Choosing from a List
Using Choice Boxes
Working with Observable Lists
Listening for Selection Changes
Using Combo Boxes
Using List Views
Using Tree Views
Book 7: Web Programming
Chapter 1: Using Java Web Start
Looking at a Simple JavaFX Program
Understanding Java Web Start
Creating a JNLP File
Creating an HTML File to Launch a Java
Application
Uploading the Java Web Start Files to Your Web
Server
Launching the ClickMe Application Using Java Web
Start
Creating an Exception to Allow Java Web Start
Applications to Run
Chapter 2: Creating Servlets
Understanding Servlets
Using Tomcat
Creating a Simple Servlet
Running a Servlet
 Improving the HelloWorld Servlet
Getting Input from the User
Using Classes in a Servlet
Chapter 3: Using JavaServer Pages
Understanding JavaServer Pages
Using Page Directives
Using Expressions
Using Scriptlets
Using Declarations
Using Classes
Chapter 4: Using JavaBeans
Getting to Know JavaBeans
Looking Over a Sample Bean
Using Beans with JSP Pages
Scoping Your Beans
Book 8: Files and Databases
Chapter 1: Working with Files
Using the File Class
Using Command-Line Parameters
Choosing Files in a Swing Application
Using Path Objects
Using a File Visitor to Walk a File Tree
Chapter 2: Working with File Streams
Understanding Streams
Reading Character Streams
Writing Character Streams
Reading Binary Streams
Writing Binary Streams
Chapter 3: Database for $100, Please
Defining a Relational Database
Understanding (and Pronouncing) SQL
Introducing SQL Statements
Creating a SQL Database
Querying a Database
 Updating and Deleting Rows
Chapter 4: Using JDBC to Connect to
a Database
Setting Up a Driver
Connecting to a Database
Querying a Database
Updating SQL Data
Using an Updatable RowSet Object
Chapter 5: Working with XML
Defining XML
Using a DTD
Processing XML in Two Ways: DOM and SAX
Reading a DOM Document
Reading DOM Nodes
Putting It All Together: A Program That Lists
Movies
About the Author
Advertisement Page
Connect with Dummies
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
 Introduction
Welcome to Java All-in-One For Dummies, 5th Edition — the one
Java book that’s designed to replace an entire shelf full of the
dull, tedious titles you’d otherwise have to buy. This book
contains all the basic information you need to know to get going
with Java programming, starting with writing statements and
using variables and ending with techniques for writing programs
that use animation and play games. Along the way, you find
plenty of not-so-basic information about programming user
interfaces, working with classes and objects, creating web
applications, and dealing with files and databases.
You can (and probably should, eventually) buy separate books on
each of these topics. It won’t take long before your bookshelf is
bulging with 10,000 or more pages of detailed information about
every imaginable nuance of Java programming. But before you’re
ready to tackle each of those topics in depth, you need to get a
bird’s-eye picture. That’s what this book is about.
And if you already own 10,000 pages or more of Java information,
you may be overwhelmed by the amount of detail and wonder,
“Do I really need to read 1,200 pages about JSP just to create a
simple web page? And do I really need a six-pound book on
JavaFX?” Truth is, most 1,200-page programming books have
about 200 pages of really useful information — the kind you use
every day — and about 1,000 pages of excruciating details that
apply mostly if you’re writing guidance-control programs for
nuclear missiles or trading systems for the New York Stock
Exchange.
The basic idea here is that I’ve tried to wring out the 100-or-so
most useful pages of information on these different Java
programming topics: setup and configuration, basic programming,
object-oriented programming, programming techniques, JavaFX,
file and database programming, web programming, and animation
and game programming. Thus you get a nice, trim book.
So whether you’re just getting started with Java programming or
you’re a seasoned pro, you’ve found the right book.
About This Book
Java All-in-One For Dummies, 5th Edition, is a reference for all the
great things (and maybe a few not-so-great things) that you may
need to know when you’re writing Java programs. You can, of
course, buy a huge 1,200-page book on each of the programming
topics covered in this book. But then, who would carry them
home from the bookstore for you? And where would you find the
shelf space to store them? And when will you find the time to
read them?
In this book, all the information you need is conveniently
packaged for you in-between one set of covers. And all of the
information is current for the newest release of Java, known as
JDK 9. This book doesn’t pretend to be a comprehensive
reference for every detail on every possible topic related to Java
programming. Instead, it shows you how to get up and running
fast so that you have more time to do the things you really want
to do. Designed using the easy-to-follow For Dummies format,
this book helps you get the information you need without laboring
to find it.
Java All-in-One For Dummies, 5th Edition, is a big book made up
of nine smaller books — minibooks, if you will. Each of these
minibooks covers the basics of one key element of programming,
such as installing Java and compiling and running programs, or
using basic Java statements, or using JavaFX to write GUI
applications.
Whenever one big thing is made up of several smaller things,
confusion is always a possibility. That’s why this book has multiple
access points. At the beginning is a detailed table of contents that
covers the entire book. Then each minibook begins with a
minitable of contents that shows you at a miniglance what
chapters are included in that minibook. Useful running heads
appear at the top of each page to point out the topic discussed on
that page. And handy thumbtabs run down the side of the pages
to help you find each minibook quickly. Finally, a comprehensive
index lets you find information anywhere in the entire book.
Foolish Assumptions
You and I have never met, so it is difficult for me to make any
assumptions about why you are interested in this book. However,
let’s start with a few basic assumptions:

You own or have access to a relatively modern

computer. The examples were created on a Windows
computer, but you can learn to program in Java just as easily on
a Mac or Linux computer.
You’re an experienced computer user. In other words, I
assume that you know the basics of using your computer, such
as starting programs and working with the file system.
You’re interested in learning how to write programs in
the Java language. Since that’s what this book teaches, it’s a
fair assumption.

I do not make any assumptions about any previous programming

experience in Java or in any other programming language. Nor do
I make any assumptions about why you want to learn about Java
programming. There are all sorts of valid reasons for learning
Java. Some want to learn Java for professional reasons; maybe
you want to become a professional Java programmer, or maybe
you are a C# or C++ programmer who occasionally needs to
work in Java. On the other hand, maybe you think programming
in Java would make an interesting hobby.
Regardless of your motivation, I do assume that you are a
reasonably intelligent person. You don’t have to have a degree in
advanced physics, or a degree in anything at all for that matter, to
master Java programming. All you have to be is someone who
wants to learn and isn’t afraid to try.
Icons Used in This Book
Like any For Dummies book, this book is chock-full of helpful
icons that draw your attention to items of particular importance.
You find the following icons throughout this book:

Danger, Will Robinson! This icon highlights information

that may help you avert disaster.

Something new is aloft! I point it out with this icon.

Did I tell you about the memory course I took?

Pay special attention to this icon; it lets you know that

some particularly useful tidbit is at hand.

Hold it — overly technical stuff is just around the corner.

Obviously, because this is a programming book, almost every
paragraph of the next 900 or so pages could get this icon. So
I reserve it for those paragraphs that go into greater depth,
down into explaining how something works under the covers
— probably deeper than you really need to know to use a
feature, but often enlightening.
Beyond the Book
In addition to the material in the print or e-book you’re reading
right now, this product also comes with some access-anywhere
goodies on the web. Check out the free Cheat Sheet for more on
Java. To get this Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and
type Java All-in-One For Dummies Cheat Sheet in the
Search box.
You can also download the code used in the book at
www.dummies.com/go/javaaiofd5e .
Where to Go from Here
This isn’t the kind of book you pick up and read from start to
finish, as if it were a cheap novel. If I ever see you reading it at
the beach, I’ll kick sand in your face. Beaches are for reading
romance novels or murder mysteries, not programming books.
Although you could read straight through from start to finish, this
book is a reference book, the kind you can pick up, open to just
about any page, and start reading. You don’t have to memorize
anything in this book. It’s a “need-to-know” book: You pick it up
when you need to know something. Need a reminder on the
constructors for the ArrayList class? Pick up the book. Can’t
remember the goofy syntax for anonymous inner classes? Pick up
the book. After you find what you need, put the book down and
get on with your life.
Book 1
Java Basics
Contents at a Glance
Chapter 1: Welcome to Java
What Is Java, and Why Is It So Great?
Java versus Other Languages
Important Features of the Java Language
On the Downside: Java’s Weaknesses
Java Version Insanity
What’s in a Name?
Chapter 2: Installing and Using Java Tools
Downloading and Installing the Java Development Kit
Using Java’s Command-Line Tools
Using Java Documentation
Chapter 3: Working with TextPad
Downloading and Installing TextPad
Editing Source Files
Compiling a Program
Running a Java Program
Chapter 1
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
house, was since dead, that the infection was in other parts of
Oxford, and that All Souls College was shut up. There was a slight
revival of it in January, 1626, which caused the exercises and the
sermons at St Mary’s to be put off[1039]. Anthony Wood gives much
the same account as for 1603, and blames the great increase of
“cottages” erected by townsmen, to which scholars were enticed.
Cambridge kept free in 1625; but on October 3, three deaths are
reported at Trumpington—one Peck, his wife, and maid. On the
same date three houses were shut up at Royston, and the infected
“translated into the fields[1040].”
The outbreak at Norwich was one of the severer degree[1041]. It was
said to have been brought in the end of June, 1625, from Yarmouth,
where nothing is recorded of it. A king’s order to the mayor imposed
extensive cleansings, &c., but the plague increased from 26 deaths
in a week in July, to 40 in September, reaching a maximum of 73
from plague in a week, besides 18 from other causes. On August 27,
Mead, the Cambridge don, writes that he had met the Norwich
carrier, who told him that the number of burials there the last week
was 77, whereof of the plague 67, and but 14 the week before. The
infection lingered on until December of the year after (1626), the
total deaths from plague having been 1431. The plague at Norwich
was made the excuse, by the mayor and aldermen writing to the
Privy Council on January 30, 1627, for not contributing towards
shipping for the king’s service; the city was distressed from
inundations and the plague, “many hundreds of houses” standing
empty. There appears to have been some plague at Lynn in the end
of 1625, a Privy Council order of January, 1626, authorising the fair
to be held there, the disease having ceased.
In April, 1627, the bailiffs and aldermen of Colchester offer the same
excuse as Norwich; they are unable to set forth any ships as directed
on account of the heavy visitation of their town by the plague, the
decay of their trade in the new draperies and baize, and the loss of
their ships at sea.
Leicestershire, also, would appear to have had another visitation in
1626. On July 28, the muster in that county was respited on account
of the shire town and nine or ten other towns being visited with the
plague. Of that there is no trace in the excellent county history by
Nichols. Leicester, like Bristol and other places, is known to have
imposed quarantine against Londoners in the summer of 1625. It is
probable that plague was also in Warwickshire in 1626[1042].
Among other outbreaks in 1625 was one at Newcastle, but it does
not compare in extent with some earlier and later plagues there. On
September 10, Lord Clifford writes from Appleby Castle to Secretary
Conway that Newcastle is so infected with plague, so ill fortified, and
ill neighboured, that 500 men would disarm it. In his own county of
Cumberland there was plague in Lord William Howard’s house. Sir
Francis Howard’s lady took the infection from a new gown she had
from London, so as she died the same day she took it; they are all
dispersed most miserably, with the greatest terror in the world.
Cheshire also had the infection in 1625[1043].
After a clear interval of two or three years, the history of plague
begins again in London, and in the provinces. The London plague of
1630 was a small affair (1317 deaths), the city being otherwise so
healthy that the christenings exceeded the total burials (9315 to
9237). In 1630, at the same time as the small London outbreak,
Cambridge had what appears to have been its most considerable
plague, but a very small one at the worst. It began about February
28, caused the colleges to break up and the midsummer assizes to
be transferred to Royston, and from first to last produced 214
deaths, known or suspected from plague[1044].
Along with it there were a good many cases at Wymondham
(Windham), and some straggling cases at Norwich and Colchester,
continuing into 1631, some 20 or 30 dying at Norwich of plague in
the latter year[1045]. The other centre in 1630 was in the north-west.
Shrewsbury, an old-world town which seldom escaped, had a
localised epidemic in St Chad’s parish. It began on May 24 in
Frankwell, but was confined to that street by cutting off the
residents therein from the rest of the town, and by removing the
infected to pest-houses in Kingsland[1046]. It continued at
Shrewsbury into 1631, and is heard of also at Preston, Wrexham,
and Manchester, collections having been made in neighbouring
places for the infected[1047]. But the one great outbreak of those
years fell upon the town of Louth, in Lincolnshire, of which the sole
particulars are that the plague from April to the end of November,
1631, swept away 754 persons of whom nearly 500 in July and
August[1048].
After four years clear in London and in all parts of England (years
occupied with the growing quarrel between the king and the
Parliament), plague broke out again not far from Louth, where we
saw it last, namely at Hull. A century and a half had passed since
Hull’s last great devastation by plague year after year from 1472 to
1478. It was then a medieval town, with a chain drawn across the
mouth of its creek of the Humber, surrounded by great abbeys, and
owing its importance to its trade in stock fish from Iceland and the
North Sea. In the Tudor times it had experienced one small epidemic
about the Blackfriars Gate in 1576, causing about a hundred deaths.
The date of the outbreak in 1635 is not given exactly; but, as in the
15th century, it was the peculiarity of Hull among provincial towns
that it kept the infection for several years,—down to June, 1638.
Business was paralysed, schools shut up, and the town deserted by
the wealthier classes. The deaths from plague from first to last are
counted at 2730, besides those which occurred in flight to other
places. Upwards of 2,500 persons, once in easy circumstances, are
said to have been reduced to seek relief, to which the county of York
contributed[1049]. In 1643 Hull stood a siege, but there is no farther
mention of plague; nor did the town suffer in 1665.
The year 1635, which saw the beginning of the Hull plague, at a
time when the infection was absolutely quiet in the capital, saw also
the beginning of an outbreak at Sandwich, with accompanying cases
at Canterbury, and a beginning at Yarmouth, Lynn and Norwich[1050],
in all which places the infections lingered at a low endemic level for
a year or more. The dates are important only as showing that these
provincial infections were looking up some months before the sharp
outburst in London in the late autumn of 1636 made any sign. In
Sandwich, on the 12th of March, 1637, there were 78 houses
“visited,” and 188 persons infected; on June 30, 24 houses shut up,
with 103 persons, some of them lodged in tents; from July 6 to
October 5, there were buried of the plague about ten every week in
St Clement’s parish. Considerable expenses were incurred (more
than £40 a week), to which the county of Kent and the other Cinque
Ports contributed[1051].
Besides these lingering endemics in Kent and Norfolk, the great
plague epidemics of 1636 were in Newcastle and London. The
Newcastle epidemic was both earlier and relatively far more severe
than that of the capital. For a town of some 20,000 inhabitants, the
following weekly figures[1052] indicate a plague of the first degree,
comparable to the London death-rates of 1625 and 1665:
Died of plague at Newcastle, within the liberties, from May 7 to
December 31, 1636:

Plague
Week ending
deaths
May 14 59
21 55
28 99
June 4 122
11 99
18 162
25 133
July 2 172
9 184
 16 212
23 270
30 366
Aug. 7 337
14 422
21 346
28 246
Sept. 4 520
11 325
To end of Dec. 908
Total to 31st Dec. 5027

Besides in Garthside, from May 30 to October 17, 515, making a

total of 5542.
This tremendous visitation of Tyneside is said to have begun in
October, 1635, at North Shields, where the infection rested during
the winter cold, to begin again at Newcastle in spring. During the
height of the epidemic in summer and autumn all trade was
suspended, no one being about in the streets or in the neighbouring
highways. The means tried to check the infection were fumigations
with pitch, rosin, and frankincense. Newcastle had one other visit
from the plague, as we shall see, in 1644 and 1645, during and after
the siege by the Scots Presbyterian army; but in 1665 it is said to
have escaped, although Defoe says that the infection was introduced
by colliers returning from the Thames.

The London Plague of 1636.

The London plague of 1636 was one of the second degree, for the
capital, and was otherwise peculiar as being rather later in the
autumnal season than usual. The following table of the weekly
mortalities shows how it increased, reached a height, and declined.

Buried of
Christened Buried in all plague
Dec. 24 231 170 0
31 195 174 0
1636
Jan. 7 217 189 0
14 242 174 0
21 220 190 0
28 214 171 0
Feb. 4 227 183 0
11 234 160 0
18 207 203 0
25 198 238 0
Mar. 3 221 198 0
10 231 194 0
17 244 187 0
24 215 177 0
31 193 196 0
Apr. 7 202 199 2
14 221 205 4
21 202 205 7
28 271 210 4
May 5 197 206 4
 12 199 254 41
19 171 244 22
26 160 263 38
June 2 189 276 51
9 153 275 64
16 145 325 86
23 149 257 65
30 141 273 82
July 7 152 265 64
14 142 298 86
21 146 350 108
28 183 365 136
Aug. 4 152 394 181
11 166 465 244
18 167 546 284
25 161 690 380
Sept. 1 163 835 536
8 153 921 567
15 166 1106 728
22 172 1018 645
29 168 1211 796
Oct. 6 170 1195 790
13 164 1117 682
20 174 855 476
27 133 779 404
Nov. 3 153 1156 755
10 164 966 635
17 143 827 512
 24 162 747 408
Dec. 1 168 550 290
8 175 335 143
15 134 324 79
9,522 23,359 10,400

The parishes chiefly affected were the same as in 1625 and 1603.
Stepney is still wanting from the general bill; but after 1636 it was
included therein, along with Newington, Lambeth, Westminster,
Islington and Hackney. These omitted parishes doubtless contributed
largely, Stepney in particular, so that the total of plague-deaths
would have to be increased by perhaps two thousand. The following
parishes had the severest mortalities:

Total deaths Plague-deaths

St Giles’s, Cripplegate 2374 870
St Mary’s, Whitechapel 1766 1060
St Olave’s, Southwark 1537 847
St Botolph’s, Aldgate 1506 735
St Sepulchre’s, Newgate 1327 566
St Saviour’s, Southwark 1269 742
St Botolph’s, Bishopsgate 1239 515
St George’s, Southwark 1044 514
St Andrew’s, Holborn 922 419
St Giles’s in the Fields 863 428
Like the greater plagues of 1603 and 1625, that of 1636 appears to
have begun in the suburbs[1053]. Taylor, the Water-poet, in reprinting
his poem on the plague of 1625, with some notes for 1636, says
that of 1076 plague-deaths from April 7 to July 28 (the summation in
the annual bill comes to 864), only 40 had occurred within the walls,
so that the general infection of the City must have followed that of
the Liberties and out-parishes. As early in the epidemic as 31 May,
according to a record of the Middlesex Sessions, “the plague
increases most at Stepney,” wherefore the Greengoose Fair at
Stratford was prohibited, (the parish of Stepney extending as far as
Shoreditch)[1054]. From Taylor we learn that Gravesend and
Faversham had calamitous visitations, and that the infection was in
many other towns and villages.
The epidemic of 1636 was like the plague of 1625 in having been
preceded by much typhus fever in London, and accompanied by the
same, as many as 2360 deaths being put down to fever in the
plague-year in the classified causes of death now issued regularly
(since 1629) in their printed bills by the Parish Clerks’ Hall. The
letters and state papers of the time bear witness to the usual exodus
from the City, the movements of the Court, and personal incidents,
which have no farther interest after the samples given for 1625. One
incident relating to the worst week of the plague in London in 1636
is preserved: eleven persons were committed to Newgate on 5
October for going with one Samuel Underhill, a trumpeter, who died
of the plague, to his grave with trumpets and swords drawn in the
night time in Shoreditch[1055]. The profession still makes no
appearance in the way of epidemiological writing; but some
“necessary directions” were drawn up by the College of Physicians,
in substance the same as certain statutes issued on the alarm of
plague in 1630[1056].
Next year, 1637, the plague continued in London, causing 3082
deaths out of a total of 11,763 in the bills. In 1638 there were only
363 plague-deaths, but the total mortality was 13,624, or nearly
2000 more than in the previous year, when plague alone had
claimed its 3000. What were the epidemic types of disease that
caused the high mortality in 1638?

Fever in London.
There ought to have been no difficulty in answering the question.
The causes of death in the metropolis had been assigned in the
books kept at Parish Clerks’ Hall since 1604, and had been printed
since 1629. The printed series was in the hands of Graunt, from
1629 down to the date of his writing, January 1662; and he did
abstract the deaths under each head of disease and casualty from
1629 to 1636 inclusive, and again from 1647 to 1661; but the ten
years from 1637 to 1646 inclusive, he omitted as presenting nothing
of importance and as being “inconsistent with the capacity” of his
sheet of paper[1057]. All the original documents prior to 1658 appear
to have been lost in the fire of 1666, so that Graunt’s omission
cannot now be made good. One could wish that the worthy citizen
had made no difficulty about the size of his paper. The omitted years
are not only those of great political revolution, which may have had
an effect upon the public health, but they are of special interest for
the beginning of that great period of fever and smallpox in London
which continued all through the 18th century.
The following section of London mortality, down to the end of our
present period, will show, by reference to the total deaths, how
important the omitted years are for the epidemiological history.

Total
Year Plague Fever Smallpox deaths
1629 0 956 72 8771
1630 1317 1091 40 10554
 31 274 1115 58 8562
32 8 1108 531 9535
33 0 953 72 8393
34 1 1279 1354 10400
35 0 1622 293 10651
36 10400 2360 127 23359
37 3082 — — 11763
38 363 — — 13624
39 314 — — 9862
1640 1450 — — 12771
41 1375 — — 13142
42 1274 — — 13273
43 996 — — 13212
44 1492 — — 10933
45 1871 — — 11479
46 2365 — — 12780
47 3597 1260 139 14059
48 611 884 401 9894
49 67 751 1190 10566
1650 15 970 184 8754
51 23 1038 525 10827
52 16 1212 1279 12569
53 6 282 139 10087
54 16 1371 832 13247
55 9 689 1294 11357
56 6 875 823 13921
57 4 999 835 12434
58 14 1800 409 14993
 59 36 2303 1523 14756
1660 13 2148 354 12681
61 20 3490 1246 16665
62 12 2601 768 13664
63 9 2107 411 12741
64 5 2258 1233 15453
65 68596 5257 655 97306
1666 1998 741 38 12738

The year 1638, and the four successive years 1640-43, have
exceptional mortalities, which plague alone can by no means
account for. In one of those years, 1641, we know that smallpox was
rife, along with plague, in the autumn; in the third week of August
there were 118 deaths from smallpox (133 from plague), and in the
second week of September 101 from smallpox (185 from plague),
the plague continuing at even higher figures all through September
and October, while smallpox ceases to be mentioned in the letters of
the time[1058]. According to earlier and later experience, the
epidemic of smallpox would have been followed by a quiet interval of
that disease; so that the high mortality, beyond what plague could
account for, would have been due to some other epidemic type.
There is little doubt that that type was fever, less heard of in letters
of the society people because it was, in its steady prevalence from
year to year, an infection of the crowded quarters of the poor.
We begin about this period to find fever, or typhus fever, taking that
place in the medical history of England which it continued to hold
down to the generation before our own. What remains of the history
of plague until its extinction in 1665-66, is so closely interwoven with
the history of malignant fever, that it will be more convenient to
carry the latter on side by side with it instead of in a separate
chapter.
The first medical essay upon the malignant fever which got the
name of typhus at the beginning of the 19th century, was that of a
physician, Sir Edward Greaves, published at Oxford in 1643 in
connexion with the sickness in that city while the king and the
Royalist army lay there, and with the sickness in the Parliamentary
army of the earl of Essex which lay at Reading. Greaves describes
the unmistakable characters of spotted fever or typhus, and calls it,
in his title “Morbus Epidemicus Anni 1643, or the New Disease.” In
his text he speaks of “this so frequently termed the New Disease.”
The name of “New Disease” was used also for influenza; but there
can be no doubt that typhus did become common in England during
the Civil Wars, between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians,
which were the first and also the only sieges and campaigns on
English soil that really touched the life of the nation.
The continent of Europe had been familiar with the same type of
fever ever since the beginning of the 16th century, now in Italy, now
in Spain, another time in the Low Countries, or in Hungary, or in
Germany in the Thirty Years’ War. Greaves, our first writer on
epidemic typhus, had been preceded a whole century by Fracastori,
whose description of the fever at Verona in 1505 is perhaps the first
account of epidemic sickness free from subservience to ancient or
medieval authority, and based upon direct observations made in
modern Europe. At the same time typhus or spotted fever was not
new to England in 1643. There is always the difficulty whether some
epidemics of fever should be called influenza or typhus; but the
fever of the Black Assizes, as well as the standing “sickness of the
house,” was certainly typhus, and so probably was the “new disease”
in 1612.
The history of fever in England has been partly traced in the chapter
on gaol-fevers in the Tudor period and on the Protean “hot agues,”
“new sickness,” “strange fevers” or influenzas of 1540, 1557-8 and
1580. At a much earlier period, fevers of the same type (with
dysenteries, lienteries, and pestilent sore throats) have been
described, with whatever details there are, in connexion with the
periodic famines, especially since the Conquest. But we are now
come to a time in the history when typhus fevers appeared in the
country unconnected with gaols or with famines. We are come,
indeed, to the new era of epidemics, which is revealed more clearly
after the plague was extinguished for good, but was really
concurrent with the last half-century of plague, preparing, as it were,
to succeed the long reign of that infection. The Civil Wars may be
admitted to have given the new types of sickness an impulse, but
the wars did not originate them, nor did they serve in any way to
establish them as the predominant forms of epidemic sickness for
nearly two centuries. Whatever it was in the condition of England
that favoured the prevalence of fevers, fluxes, and smallpox, that
factor was beginning to make itself felt shortly after the Tudor period
ended: it continued in operation through all political changes of
Restoration, Revolution, and Georgian rule; and if the conditions at
length changed, largely for the better so far as the adult population
is concerned, and for the better even as regards infancy, there has
followed the “nova cohors febrium” of our own time, appropriate to
its own state of society, as was the old troop before it. This theme is
really the subject with which a new volume should open; but as the
plague-period overlaps its successor the fever-period by half a
century, and as one must pay heed to the chronology, it remains to
insert some facts about fevers in this place.

Review of Fever in England to 1643.

Of the prevalence of malignant fevers in England in the earlier years
of the 17th century we have only occasional glimpses. Thus, in
London in November, 1612, there were several deaths of prominent
personages. Prince Henry, eldest son of James I., died of a fever in
the course of that month, the illness being thus referred to by
Chamberlain in one of his letters to Carleton, written on November
12 from London:
“It is verily thought that the disease was no other than the ordinary
ague that hath reigned and raged almost all over England since the
latter end of summer, which, by observation, is found must have its
ordinary course, and the less physic the better, but only sweating
and an orderly course of keeping and government. The extremity of
the disease seemed to lie in his head [a sure sign of typhus], for
remedy whereof they shaved him and applied warm cocks and
pigeons newly killed, but with no success.”
Sir Theodore Mayerne, the king’s physician (who had been driven
from Paris by the intolerance of the Galenists towards those who
used antimony and other Paracelsist remedies), was a good deal
blamed because he had purged the patient instead of bleeding him.
Writing again on the 19th November, Chamberlain says: “On Friday
Sir Harry Row, our alderman died, and, same morning, Sir George
Carey, master of the wards, of this new disease.” Chamberlain’s
statement that an epidemic fever, which he calls “the ordinary ague,”
had raged all over England from the end of summer, 1612, is
supported by Short’s abstracts of the parish registers for that year,
while the following year, 1613, stands out as still more unhealthy.
The next unwholesome year in Short’s tables is 1616; and of that
sickly time we have one great personal illustration. Shakespeare died
on April 23 at Stratford-on-Avon, after three days’ illness of a fever
(but possibly of a chill) having just completed his 52nd year. So far
as is known, he was not in failing health. It is a singular coincidence
that he made his will on March 25 preceding, the first day of the
year, old style; but the customary phrase, “in perfect health and
memory (God be praised!),” would have been perhaps varied a little
if illness had been creeping upon him. Now the year 1616 is the
most unhealthy in Short’s tables from the beginning of the century;
the parish registers do not bear witness again to so much sickness
until 1623, which, as we have seen, was a year of typhus. The
winter of 1615-16 was altogether exceptional: warm and
tempestuous south-westerly and westerly winds prevailed from
November until February; on the 8th February, there were East
Indiamen lying in the Downs, which had been at anchor there for
ten weeks waiting for a change of wind to take them down the
Channel. The warm winds brought “perpetual weeping weather, foul
ways and great floods,” and brought also an early spring. In the last
week of January the archbishop found a nest of young blackbirds in
his garden at Lambeth, and had “another sent to him from Croydon
about four days after.” That was proverbially the kind of Christmas to
make a fat churchyard; but it is impossible to say whether one type
of sickness, such as fever, predominated, as in the preceding sickly
years, 1612-13, and in the next following 1616, namely 1623-24.
The following figures from Short’s tables will prove, at least, that
there was excessive mortality.
In the year 1616, twenty-one parish registers out of eighty-eight
examined, showed excessive mortality, the burials being 601 and the
baptisms 417, the year 1617 showing a somewhat improved state of
health. In the market towns for the same two years, the excessive
proportion of burials to christenings is equally striking: of sixteen
town registers examined, ten showed a bad state of health in 1616
(714 burials to 568 baptisms), and in 1617, nine towns had 786
burials to 652 baptisms. But neither in town nor country do the
years 1616-17 stand out so unhealthy as the years 1623-24. Those
two biennial periods are the only very conspicuous ones in Short’s
list for the first quarter of the 17th century, the year 1613 coming
next in unhealthiness.
Let us now seek for any causes such as unwholesome conditions of
living upon which these epidemic fevers might have depended. One
of the most notorious forms of typhus in the 18th century was the
ship-fever. The problem how to destroy its infection in the hulls of
transports and ships of war occupied the attention of the men of
science, Stephen Hales among the rest. Parliament, eager for any
cure of so disastrous a pest, voted some thousands of pounds to a
projector whose method, when tried, resulted in nothing but the
burning of three ships to the water’s edge. This ship-fever became
notorious early in the 17th century, having occurred before in 1588.
If the Elizabethan naval annals in Hakluyt’s collection were less
engrossed than they are with adventures and doughty deeds, we
should probably have had more glimpses of an unwholesome state
of things in the ’tween-decks. At all events there is no doubt that
fever infested the shipping of England as well as of France about the
year 1625. The conditions on board ship are, of course, special;
there might have been ship-fever, when there was no gaol-fever,
workhouse-fever, or domestic typhus in general. But what happened
on board ship was no bad index of what was happening on shore.
The nation, both on sea and on land, was expanding far beyond its
old medieval limits, with very crude notions of the elbow-room that it
needed. The ideas of cubic space, ventilation, and the like, with
which we are now so familiar, had then no existence. A few facts
about the shipping, gaols and houses will serve to illustrate this
statement.
The fleet which sailed from Plymouth to make war on Spain in the
autumn of 1625 consisted of 90 sail, and carried 10,000 men.
Whether there was overcrowding would depend, of course, on the
size of the ships; and it may be safely said that the largest ship of
the fleet was not a fourth part the size of a transport that would be
allowed to carry five hundred men today. The expedition came back
in a few weeks broken by sickness and mutiny, just as the expedition
of Mansfeld for the relief of the Palatinate had fared. The wretched
state of the thirty ships which arrived at Plymouth in November,
1625, has been mentioned already. At the same date we read of
French ships of war also throwing overboard two or three dead men
every day. There are some more precise figures for French ships in
1627, to be given in the next chapter, which will enable us to
measure the provocation to ship-fever afforded by the conditions of
a transport service in those years.
Besides ship-fever, in the great typhus period of the 18th century,
there used to be named gaol-fever, and workhouse-fever. Of the
gaol-fever one hears little in these years. It was severe in the
Queen’s Bench prison in Southwark in March, 1579; a petition of that
date complains that the prison held double the usual number, that
“the sickness of the house” was rife, and that near a hundred had
died of it there during the previous six years, many more having
been sick[1059]. “The sickness of the house” is a name suggestive of
what was usual. These events of prison life made little stir unless
they involved the health of classes far removed from the prison-
class, as in the three memorable instances of the Black Assizes at
Cambridge, Oxford and Exeter. But it is not certain that even such
cases have been all recorded, or that instances of gaol-fever
spreading to those outside may not have been more frequent than
appears. Whitmore in his book of 1659 on fevers in London and the
country, quotes Bacon’s remarks upon the Black Assizes of the Tudor
period and adds: “and within this eight or nine years there happened
the like at Southwark, as I am credibly informed.” That would have
been in the King’s Bench prison some time about 1650, which is not
far from the date we have brought the history down to[1060].
The overcrowding of the ships and of the gaols had its counterpart
in the dwelling-houses of London and other towns such as
Portsmouth. The proclamations against the erection of houses on
new sites within three miles of the city gates continued to be issued
to the time of Cromwell. The effect of them was merely to call into
existence a class of poor tenements in odd corners or to overcrowd
the existing houses. Thus, on June 27, 1602: “The council have
spied an inconvenient increase of housing in and about London by
building in odd corners, in gardens and over stables. They have
begun to pull down one here and there, lighting in almost every
parish on the unluckiest, which is far from removing the
mischief[1061].” Again, on February 24, 1623, certain inhabitants of
Chancery Lane were indicted at the Middlesex Sessions for
subletting, “to the great danger of infectious disease with plague
and other diseases[1062].” Again, in May, 1637, there were found in
one house eleven married couples and fifteen single persons; in
another the householder had taken in eighteen lodgers[1063]. The
monstrous window-tax, which did more than anything else to breed
typhus and perpetuate smallpox, was not imposed until after the
Revolution; but there was enough in the London of the Stuarts to
explain the great increase of those diseases.
We have already had evidence of the wide prevalence of spotted
fever in 1624, even in the houses of the rich. In the harvest of 1625,
Mead, of Cambridge, heard of much sickness which he calls “ague,”
about Royston and Barkway, localities by no means malarious; so
many were ill that the people wanted help to gather the harvest out
of the fields. The nature of these “agues” is a question of great
difficulty. The intermissions or remissions of the country fevers are
clearly enough asserted by Willis and others, whatever they were; at
the same time the general characters of the disease, or diseases, are
not those of intermittent malarial fever; and “influenza” does not
help us. Chamberlain calls the fever of 1624 “the spotted fever,” and
Sir Theodore Mayerne, physician to James I., in a long opinion upon
the king’s state of health and the treatment, dated Aug. 20, 1624,
introduces a paragraph “Ad Febrem Purpuream,” which, he says, was
prevalent that year, “not so much contagious as common through a
universal disposing cause,” seizing upon many in the same house,
and destroying numbers, being most full of malignity etc. These
various accounts for town and country point to a form of typhus;
and we find that diagnosis confirmed for the country fevers which
were again widely prevalent a few years later, about 1638.
Among other statistics in Graunt’s essay of 1662 we find the figures
from the register of “a parish in Hampshire” from 1569 to 1658.
There were several years of excessive mortality in that period just as
in Short’s tables, but the worst were 1638 and 1639—the years of
high mortality (not plague) in London also. Of that mortality in the
Hampshire parish Graunt has given a brief account, which he seems
to have based on first-hand information. The parish contained about
2700 inhabitants, and enjoyed average good health during the
period of 90 years covered by the figures, the births exceeding the
deaths by twelve on an average in the year. In the year 1638 the
deaths were 156 and the births 66 (about the average); in 1639 the
deaths were 114 and the births 55. The cause of this great excess of
mortality in a country parish was, says Graunt, not plague, “but a
malignant fever raging so fiercely about harvest that there appeared
scarce hands enough to take in the corn; which argues, considering
there were 2700 parishioners, that 7 might be sick for one that died;
whereas of the plague more die than recover. They lay longer sick
than is usual in plague,” and there were no plague-tokens.
This considerable epidemic of fever, which must have affected some
hundreds of people, occurred in a Hampshire parish. In the very
same season (autumn and winter of 1638) we hear of what is
obviously the same sickness being epidemic all over the county of
Monmouth. On April 23, 1639, the sheriff of Monmouthshire thus
explained his delay in executing the king’s writ for an assessment:
“In January last I sent forth my warrants for the gathering and
levying thereof, but there has been such a general sickness over all
this country, called ‘the new disease,’ that they could not possibly be
expedited.... Besides, the plague was very hot in divers parts of the
county, as Caerleon, Abergavenny, Bedwelty, and many other
places[1064].” Here the sheriff uses the same name as Greaves put on
his title-page five years after, and he distinguishes clearly between
the fever and the plague. The mayor and others of Northampton, in
a memorial to the Recorder, dated May 1, 1638, touching the
exclusion of Northampton tradesmen from fairs in the vicinity owing
to suspicions of the plague in their town, had been informed by the
physicians that some cases were of the plague, and some of “the
spotted fever[1065].” The same distinction had been made at
Norwich, in 1636: in October there was a suspicion of the plague,
“but the physicians say it is some other contagious disease which die
with the spots[1066].” At Northampton, the coexistence of plague and
some other sickness is asserted also by the sheriff (Sept. 18, 1638),
who had to excuse himself, like so many other sheriffs, for his failure
to remit the ship-money: he himself and his servants had had
sickness, and the plague was so great and so long in Northampton
that the county still allowed £148 a week for relief of the sick. The
deaths in that epidemic from March to September were 533[1067].
The sheriff of Montgomery, making a like excuse on October 25,
1638, speaks of the plague only: “It pleased God to visit a great part
of the county with the plague, and three of the greatest towns,
Machynlleth, Llanidloes and Newton[1068].” The sheriff of
Radnorshire, in his excuse to the Privy Council, on November 14,
says he could not collect the ship-money at Presteign “by reason of
the plague, which continued there for two years together, and did
not cease until the latter end of April last[1069].” We may take it,
then, that there was a great deal of plague in Wales about 1637 and
1638, that there was also “the new disease,” or spotted fever, all
over Monmouth and probably other Welsh counties, that the same
two forms coexisted at Norwich and Northampton, just as they
coexisted in London, and that Graunt’s parish in Hampshire in 1638
had probably the fever only.
Short’s statistical tables again bear out the concrete history. In 1638,
nineteen country parishes, out of ninety-four examined, had 699
burials to 542 baptisms, and in 1639, eighteen parishes had 585
burials to 386 baptisms. In the market towns the unhealthy period
(which may have been due to plague in great part) is a year earlier.
In 1637, ten towns out of twenty-four whose registers were added
up, show 1474 burials to 1008 baptisms, the proportion in 1638 for
the same number of unhealthy towns being 1438 to 1025.
It would have been one of the country epidemics of those years that
Boghurst brings into his account of the plague of London in 1665: “I
was told by an ancient woman that in Somersetshire the spotted
fever was very epidemical, so that whole families died; but being
told that plantan [plantain] was very good, all of them almost took
it, which wrought an admirable change, for very few died that took
it, whereas before they died very fast.” He thinks plantain was as
likely to have effected a cure as “higher priced medicines.” We shall
find a corresponding prevalence of fever described by a competent
physician, Whitmore, for rural parts of Cheshire and Shropshire in
1651 and 1658. Thus we have a remarkable epidemiological
phenomenon, somewhat new to England unless, indeed, we bring all
those spotted fevers and the like under the generic name of
influenza. It was in country districts in 1612-13 and from 1623 to
1625, it was extensively prevalent in 1638 in places as far apart as
Hampshire, Monmouth and Northampton, it appeared in Berkshire
and Oxfordshire in 1643 in connexion with the military movements
of the Royalist and Parliamentary armies, it caused a disastrous loss
of life in Tiverton within a few weeks of Essex’s army passing
through the town in 1644; it is heard of again in Shropshire and
Cumberland in 1651-52, and in the same parts in 1658, as well as in
Somerset, and in London steadily from year to year.
It was in its steadiness from year to year in the poor quarters of
towns, as well as in its more frequent recurrences as a country
epidemic, that the spotted fever deserved the name of “new
disease” in the reign of Charles I. But more than one epidemic fever
had been called a “new disease” in England before; and no fewer
than five epidemics were so called from 1643 to 1685, of which only
one or two can be classed among the influenzas.
If it had been possible to keep in mind the history of sicknesses from
century to century or even from generation to generation, the “new
disease” might have been recognised as not unlike the type that
overran England in 1087, that was described by William of Newburgh
in 1196, by Matthew Paris in 1258, and by Trokelowe in 1315-16.
The conditions producing it or favouring it were not, indeed, the
same in all particulars in the medieval period, in the Tudor period,
and in the Stuart period. In the medieval period, the extreme want
and misery which brought epidemic sickness were due to occasional
sharp famines at long intervals, from failure of the crops. In the
Tudor period epidemics were still so occasional (so far as is known)
that something more special will have to be blamed for them than
the swarms of vagrants and criminals all over England, which made
the reign of Henry VIII. notorious, and were still a source of trouble
until late in the reign of Elizabeth; the four chief periods were in
1540, 1557-8, 1580-82, and 1596-97 so that some special cause
would have to be assumed in those years to account for their
peculiar “epidemic constitution.” Almost from the beginning of the
Stuart period, the seasons of fever (to say nothing of flux and
smallpox), seem to come in quicker succession; they are heard of in
1612-13, 1623-25, 1638, 1643-44, 1651, 1658-9, and 1661-65, and
heard of in those years over wide tracts of rural England as well as
in London and other towns. It was from such experiences that the
doctrine arose, so unintelligible to us now, of an “epidemic
constitution of the air,” which may be traced, indeed, to much earlier
writings than those of the 17th century, but finds its most frequent
applications in the latter. The fevers were in part contagious and not
contagious; contagion could not explain them all, and yet there was
an undoubted infective element in them. The universality or
generality of their incidence was accounted for by assuming, on the
one hand, something common in the state of the air and, on the
other hand, some common predisposition in the bodies of men,
which might itself have had seasonal causes. We have now only one
name for such common infection of the air, namely influenza; and it
is significant that the catarrhal influenzas of 1658 and 1659 were
regarded by some at the time as only the appropriate vernal form of
the fever which in the hot weather of 1657 and 1658 had prevailed
almost in the same general way as influenza, but with the symptoms
of typhus. One thing which should not be overlooked, is that plague
was still in the country, not always at the same time as the fever,
and perhaps not usually coincident with it. Another thing, which will
come out in its due order at a later part of the history, is that after
the extinction of plague, fever became far more steady in the towns
from year to year, and in certain years was not less prevalent in
influenza-like epidemics all over the country. One might offer some
suggestions as to the meaning of these epidemiological phenomena;
but it will perhaps be more convenient that critics who have a
speculative turn or a craving for generalities should exercise the one
or gratify the other at their own risk.
Along with the prevalence of plague in 1637-38 in many towns of
Wales, we may associate the outbreak of 1638 in Gloucester on the
one side and in the small Salopian town of Clun on the other. From a
letter of the Privy Council to the justices of Gloucestershire, it
appears that a rate in aid of the plague-stricken in the city had been
imposed upon the county in December, 1637, and that the infection
still continued in Gloucester in September, 1638. Contributions made
in Bridgenorth for the relief of the visited in Clun appear to belong to
the same year. At Reading a tax for the “visited” had been collected
once or oftener between 1638 and 1641. In 1641 the town of
Leicester was put to some expense (£46. 8s. 7d.) in watching to
keep out the sickness which prevailed in Thurmaston, Birstal,
Whetstone and Oakham. The very severe plague in Stamford the
same year would have been the most intense part of the epidemic in
that corner of England; “Camden,” quoting from bishop Sanderson’s
manuscript, says that it began at St James’s tide, 1641, and ended
in March following, whereof are said to have died between 500 and
600 persons[1070].
Another centre of plague in 1641 was Congleton, in Cheshire, if we
may trust the accuracy of the date given in a manuscript written
some time after and seemingly based upon tradition[1071]. The
infection was traced to a box of clothes which had belonged to one
dead of the plague in London and were sent to the dead man’s
relations at North Rede Hall. The family who received the box
“caught the infection and died.” It spread “all over the country,” and
came to Congleton, where it made dreadful ravages. The traditions
which the anonymous narrator has put on record are, indeed, those
of a plague of the greater degree—stories of corpses that no one
would bury, of the sick left to their fate, of money dropped into
water before it changed hands. This somewhat doubtful narrative
ends with the statement that “the greatest part of the inhabitants
died.”
The period from 1643 to 1650 contains all the outbreaks of plague
that remain, whether in London or the provinces, until we come to
the final explosion of 1665. In London the plague continued at a low
endemic level from the outburst of 1636 until 1648, the deaths in
1647 reaching the considerable figure of 3597. This series of plague-
years has no other interest than as showing how regularly every
season the infection increased from a few cases in May or June to a
maximum in September or October. One incident, out of many, may
find a place. In August, 1647, Sir Philip Stapleton, one of the Eleven
Members, leaders of the Presbyterian party, who were accused of
treason by the Army, went over to Calais with five more of the
accused, and died of the plague almost as soon as he landed. The
people of the house where he died made the rest of the party pay
them £80 before they would let them come forth, for bringing the
sickness into their house[1072].
The plagues in provincial towns were in those years much more
serious relatively than those in London. All of them occurred in
towns that were besieged, or had been besieged, or had been
occupied by bodies of troops or by garrisons. At the same time most
of them were towns which had suffered plagues before. But the first
effects of the war in the way of epidemic sickness were not of the
type of plague.

War-typhus in Oxfordshire and Berkshire.

It was in the spring and summer of 1643 that England had a first
experience of the war-typhus which had been familiar to the
continent of Europe for a century and a half, having reached perhaps
its greatest prevalence in the Thirty Years’ War. It is only in the
sense of war-typhus that Shakespeare’s boast, put into the mouth of
John of Gaunt, holds good:
“This fortress, built by nature for herself,
Against infection and the hand of war.”
The medieval civil wars in England do not seem to have bred
infection among the people, unless, perhaps, during the anarchy of
Stephen’s reign: there is reason to think that the faction-fights of
York and Lancaster had no such result. But the wars of the
Parliament against the Royalists produced war-sickness in its most
characteristic form, and that too, at the very beginning of the
struggle.
The existence of sickness in 1643 among the troops of the
Parliament in Berkshire and Oxfordshire, under the earl of Essex, is
briefly stated by Rushworth. But, for the first time in the history, we
find a medical account of the type of sickness, of its circumstances,
and of the extent of its prevalence, which is not without interest
even for the military history. It happened that the afterwards
celebrated Dr Thomas Willis, chemist, anatomist, physiologist and
physician, was at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1643, being then aged
twenty-one, and intending to enter the Church. In 1659 he published
at the Hague his first medical essays, one on Fermentation and the
other on Fevers[1073]; and in the latter he recalls many particulars of
what he had seen in his earlier years in and around Oxford. The
sickness of 1643 was also the subject of a tract published that year
in Oxford, by his majesty’s command, by Sir Edward Greaves,
physician to the king, which appears to have been in sufficient
request in the town to be reprinted within the year[1074].
The preceding events may be briefly summarized[1075]. In November,
1642, the king moved from Oxford with his army towards London
and seized Brentford. The forces of the Parliament, under Essex,
concentrated round the capital, where they were joined by the
trainbands of the City, so that the king recrossed the Thames at
Kingston and retired upon Reading and Oxford. All through the
months from January to April 1643, tedious negociations went on for
a treaty, the details largely relating to the places to be occupied by
the Parliamentary troops on the one hand (around Windsor) and by
the Royalist troops on the other (in Oxfordshire and Bucks). In April
the negociations fell through, and Essex came before Reading on the
15th, with an army of 15,000 foot and 3000 horse. The king and
prince Rupert attempted to raise the siege by a march from Oxford,
but were stopped at Caversham bridge, and on the 26th April,
Reading was surrendered to the Lord General, the garrison marching
out the day after.
The siege had lasted only eleven days; the Royalist commandant
was sentenced to death at Oxford for betraying the town, but was
pardoned. When Essex entered Reading he found the place
“infected,” and a great mortality ensued among his men, who were
discontented at the want of plunder and of pay. In June he moved
his troops across the chalk downs to Thame, on the borders of
Bucks; but the weather being wet and unseasonable in the early
summer, and afterwards hot, the sickness so increased among them
that “he judged the design upon Oxford impracticable” (Rushworth),
and on July 9, wrote to the Parliament advising a peace. In his letter,
Essex explained that it was impossible to keep the counties from
being plundered, “so that they must suffer much wrong, and the
cries of the people are infinite.” Eventually he brought what
remained of his army to the neighbourhood of London, and having
received 2000 recruits from the City, he held a muster on Hounslow
Heath, when his whole force amounted to 10,000 men. With his
recruited army he marched to the relief of Gloucester[1076], raised
the siege, and on September 20 won the (first) battle of Newbury.
The realities of that inactive summer at Reading and Thame may be
conceived from what Willis tells us of the state of things within the
Royalist lines in Oxfordshire. These things, he says, “fell under our
own observation,” he being then at Christ Church and not yet
entered on the physic line.
In the spring of 1643, Reading being held for the king,
“In both armies there began a disease to arise very epidemical;
however they persisting in that work till the besieged were forced to
a surrender, this disease grew so grievous that in a short time after,
either side left off and from that time for many months fought not
with the enemy, but with the disease; as if there had not been
leisure to turn aside to another kind of death....
Essex’s camp moving to Thame, pitched in the places adjacent,
where he shortly lost a great part of his men.
But the king returned to Oxford, where at first the soldiers, being
disposed in the open fields, then afterwards among the towns and
villages, suffered not much less. For his foot (which it chiefly
invaded) being pact together in close houses, when they had filled
all things with filthiness and unwholesome nastiness and stinking
odours (that the very air seemed to be infected) they fell sick by
troops, and as it were by squadrons. At length the fever, now more
than a camp fever, invaded the unarmed and peaceable troops, to
wit, the entertainers of the soldiers, and, generally, all others: yet at
first (the disease being but yet lightly inflicted) though beset with a
heavy and long languishment, however, many escaped. About the
summer solstice this fever began also to increase with worse
provision of symptoms, and to lay hold on the husbandmen and
others inhabiting the country, then afterwards spread through our
city and all the country round for at least ten miles about. In the
mean time they who dwelt far from us in other counties remained
free from hurt, being as it were without the sphere of the contagion.
But here this disease became so epidemical that a great part of the
people was killed by it; and as soon as it had entered a house it ran
through the same, that there was scarce one left well to administer
to the sick. Strangers, or such as were sent to help the sick, were
presently taken with the disease; that at length for fear of the
contagion, those who were sick of this fever were avoided by those
who were well, almost as much as if they had been sick of the
plague.
Nor indeed did there a less mortality or slaughter of men accompany
this disease; because cachectic and phthisical old men, or other
ways unhealthful, were killed by it; also not a few children, young
men, and those of a more mature and robust age. I remember in
some villages that almost all the old men died this year, that there
were scarce any left who were able to defend the manners and
privileges of the parish by the more anciently received
traditions[1077].”
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