South Australia - Health
- Cancer
- Consumption
- Dentistry
- Diphtheria
- Euthanasia
- Fevers
- Influenza and Colds
- Typhoid
- Miscellany
- General Health Matters
- Food Adulteration
- Infant Paralysis
- Miscellany
- Mortality
- Public Health
- Quarantine
- Smallpox and Vaccination
- Social Diseases
- Vegetarianism
- Insanity
- Infant Mortality
- Medical Professions
- Anaesthesia
- Flying Doctors
- Lodges and the Medical Profession
- Miscellany
- "Quackery"
Fevers
Influenza and Colds
Common Colds and Influenza
(Taken from Geoffrey H. Manning's A Colonial Experience)
Our ancestors were plagued with the common cold which even today still awaits a 'cure'; back in 1847 a correspondent to a newspaper provided readers with his remedy:-
I bathed my feet in warm water, swallowed a hot drink of gruel mixed with other heating ingredients - brandy, pepper and treacle, buried myself under a pyramid of blankets, beneath which I remained smoking hot, puffing and perspiring till four o'clock the following afternoon.
'Influenza' is an Italian word and it means what we express in English by almost the same word, influence. A few centuries ago people believed in the existence of witches and in the influence of the stars. It is said that in this way that the word 'Influenza', as applied to the disease, so called, originated. Although it was absurd to think that the complaint had anything to do with the stars, the name is not a bad one for it certainly springs from some pervading influence.
Today's youth may laugh at their ancestors and their beliefs, but we are unable to trace clearly the cause of the disease; in 1853 it was thought it could originate from subtle poison diffused throughout the atmosphere, which medical men called a 'miasma':
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It cannot be accounted for much better than the flocks, the myriads, of lady-birds which have lately visited our shores. Now, though it appears in hot weather and cold, in dry and wet it may still depend on certain conditions of the weather, just as a person will sometimes take a cough in a warm moist day and again in a dry east wind... At particular seasons such complaints abound - at others they abound still more; and again, from some singularity they prevail so much that people say, there is an Influenza.
General Notes
A cure for influenza is provided by a correspondent to the Register on 25 August 1847 at page 2c:
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I bathed my feet in warm water, swallowed a hot drink of gruel mixed with other heating ingredients - brandy, pepper and treacle, buried myself under a pyramid of blankets, beneath which I remained smoking hot, puffing and perspiring till four o'clock the following afternoon.
(Also see Register,
8 December 1852, page 3e and
Observer,
4 November 1876, page 7f.)
"The Influenza" is discussed in the Adelaide Times,
24 May 1853, page 2b:
- It cannot be accounted for much better than the flocks, the myriads, of lady-birds which have lately visited our shores. Now, though it appears in hot weather and cold, in dry and wet it may still depend on certain conditions of the weather, just as a person will sometimes take a cough in a warm moist day and again in a dry east wind... At particular seasons such complaints abound - at others they abound still more; and again, from some singularity they prevail so much that people say, there is an Influenza.
Also see
The Lantern,
18 January 1890, page 25,
29 March 1890, page 28 (cartoons),
Observer,
18 January 1890, page 34a,
Register,
29 March 1890, pages 4g-7c,
26 June 1890, page 6c,
19 October 1891, page 4e,
Advertiser,
6 May 1890, page 7d,
26 June 1890, page 6d,
11 April 1891, page 4c,
14 and 20 October 1891, pages 5g and 7c,
7 November 1891, page 4d,
Observer,
24 October 1891, page 25d.
"An Influenza Epidemic" is in the Register on
30 September 1899, page 5e and
5 October 1899, page 5b.
"Colds" is in the Register,
1 June 1911, page 6d.
An editorial on influenza is in the Advertiser,
19 May 1913, page 14d.
"Colds" is in the Register,
1 June 1911, page 6d,
"Catching and Curing a Cold" on
2 May 1914, page 14d,
"Feed a Cold and Starve a Fever" on
12 November 1921, page 6f,
"The Common Cold" on
3 October 1922, page 8d.
"Influenza - Go to Bed" is in the Register,
26 June 1918, page 6e.
"The Spanish Flu" is discussed on
22 and 30 November 1918, pages 7c and 7a,
4, 20 and 24 December 1918, pages 7e, 6d and 6b,
29, 30 and 31 January 1919, pages 6b, 7a and 6c-7a,
4, 7, and 19 February 1919, pages 4c, 7a and 7a,
6 March 1919, page 7a,
21 April 1919, page 5a,
18 March 1921, page 6e.
A photograph of "Masks and Influenza" is in the Observer,
7 February 1919, page 25.
"Exhibition Influenza Isolation Hospital" is in the Register,
29 April 1919, page 5b,
2, 3, 5, 9 and 14 May 1919, pages 7b-8e-g, 7a, 4g and 8e,
30 September 1919, page 7e,
14 and 17 February 1920, pages 8f and 7d.
"Influenza" is in the Register, 5 February 1920, page 3g.
"Influenza Outbreak" is in the Register,
23 June 1923, page 9g,
6 July 1923, page 8e,
"Cold and Colds - Pre-Winter Precautions" on
20 May 1926, page 10c.
"What is Influenza" is in the Advertiser,
21 September 1934, page 20h.
Fevers
Typhoid
Typhoid Fever
(Taken from G.H.Manning, A Colonial Experience)
It seems a pity in a territory so broad as that of South Australia, that we must run up anti-malaria ramparts; and even in the sultry myths of summer seal ourselves hermetically in our houses to avoid inhaling poison... In many of the centre streets of Adelaide the air is powerfully impregnated with what, under favourable meteorological conditions, may prove to be the seeds of typhus and other epidemic diseases... [The suburbs] are all in turn subjected to the most loathsome smells that it is possible to conceive.
(Advertiser, 17 January 1871, page 2.)
As early as 1872 the press was prone to comment on the pollution of streams which flowed into the Park Lands and the liquid filth which they contained in the summer months; further comment followed on the filthy character of Adelaide and its abutting suburbs:
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The effluvia generated in the city are offensive enough, but when aggravated by the effluvia from slaughter-houses, boiling down works, bone mills and similar establishments outside the city bounds, but within easy scent of the citizens, they become utterly unbearable.
The City Fathers were apparently unmoved, for six years later under the heading 'The Typhoid Ponds' an irate citizen said:
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Onward runs this pestilential fluid... this abomination takes its course zigzag through the Parklands into the West Torrens district, percolating through to the wells, impregnating the water with germs of every deadly disease conceivable. For what, may I ask, do we pay sanitary taxes...
By 1882 the realisation that 'water drawn from a well situated near a cesspool may be very apt to bred typhoid fever' was abroad. Two years later an outbreak of typhoid fever occurred in the Mile End-Hilton district and at a meeting of the Central Board of Health it was stated 'that no less than seven cases of typhoid fever were supposed to be traceable to the milk supplied from a dairy at Hilton.'
In retrospect, there would appear to be little doubt that the 'death giving streams' which ran into the West Torrens district were drank from by cows, and polluted wells by seepage. In such an environment an outbreak of typhoid was all but inevitable.
General Notes
Typhoid and its causes are discussed in the Register,
25 March 1873, page 5d,
Advertiser,
13 May 1880, page 4d,
31 May 1884, page 5a,
18 February 1887, page 4d,
Register,
21, 22, 23, 25 and 26 June 1883, pages 4c, 6d, 7c, 4e-7a-b, 4e,
3 July 1883, page 4f,
20 March 1886, page 7f,
22 April 1886, page 4g,
14 May 1886, page 4h,
Express,
14 May 1884, page 3c.
"Typhoid Fever and the Corporation" is in the Register,
21 April 1882, page 4d,
"Typhoid Fever and the Water Supply" on
2 May 1882, page 4g.
Also see Advertiser,
18 February 1887, page 4d,
13 April 1888, page 4e,
7 March 1889, page 4e,
18 December 1889, page 4b,
Register,
6 February 1889, page 4f,
18 March 1890, page 5f,
Observer,
27 March 1890, page 25e,
Advertiser,
23 March 1894, page 4g,
Register,
8 October 1896, page 4d,
30 June 1897, page 4e,
Advertiser,
30 November 1897, page 4f,
6 January 1898, pages 4d-5g.
"Typhoid, Dairies and Drainage" is in the Register,
13 January 1896, page 4f.
"Typhoid and the Weather" is in the Advertiser on
5 March 1898, page 6e; also see
23 May 1898, page 4f,
6 May 1903, page 4b.
"Typhoid Fever and the Sewage Farm" is in the Advertiser,
26 July 1888, page 6c,
"Sanitation and Typhoid" on
19 January 1898, page 6c.
"How to Feed a Typhoid Patient" is in the Observer,
9 September 1899, page 16b.
"Typhoid Conquered - New Method of Purifying Water" is in the Advertiser,
19 January 1905, page 5e.
"The Typhoid Fly" is in the Register,
9 September 1911, page 8c.
"A Typhoid Outbreak" is in the Register,
3 December 1913, page 13c.
Fevers
Miscellany
Further information is in G.H.Manning's -- A Colonial Experience
A letter from Dr Cotter in respect of scarlet fever is in the Observer,
6 May 1848, page 2c,
"Scarlet Fever and Scarlatina" is discussed in the Register,
5 January 1864, page 3c,
Advertiser,
18 November 1863, page 2e.
An editorial on "Scarlet Fever and its Prevention" is in the Register,
17 November 1875, page 4e; also see
Observer,
1 and 15 January 1876, pages 13d and 6g.
"The Cholera" is discussed in the South Australian,
6 February 1849, page 2b,
Observer,
11 January 1851, page 4c,
7 and 14 January 1854, pages 6b and 1c (supp.),
2 December 1854, page 8d,
Advertiser,
20 November 1893, page 4g.
Fevers generally are discussed in the Observer,
8 and 22 July 1854, pages 11g and 3f under "Popular Medicine".
An antidote for scarlatina and measles is given in the Register,
10 June 1859, page 2h.
"Dandelion Fever" is described and a cure provided in the Register,
17 October 1883, page 7c,
"Dandelion and Hay Fever" is in the Advertiser,
5 September 1889, page 7b.
