1804 — Scarlet Fever (“Canker Rash”), Reading, Windsor County, VT (15), NYC (14)– 29

–29  Blanchard tally of State breakouts below.

–14  NY.  Jones. Contagious and Infectious Diseases. 1884, p. 193.[1]

–15  VT. Gallup. Sketches of Epidemic Diseases in…State of Vermont. 1815, p.52, cites Bowen.[2]

 

Narrative Information

 

Gallup: “Dr. Bowen observes that the canker rash prevailed in Reading in 1803-4.[3] In 1803, it assumed the inflammatory type. Out of about two hundred cases, treated as an inflammatory complaint, ten only proved fatal. In 1804, he thinks, it assumed the malignant type. Fifteen died out of forty cases. In 1803, his common practice was blood-letting, neutral salts, &c. In 1804, he thinks blood-letting was injurious after the first 24 hours. Warm bath and small bleeding ere useful, if practiced early. He further observes, ‘In the fatal cases death happened from a translation of inflammation, and effusion in the brain, as appeared on dissection.’” (Sketches of Epidemic Diseases in the State of Vermont. 1815, p. 52.)

 

Sources

 

Gallup, Joseph A., M.D. Sketches of Epidemic Diseases in the State of Vermont; From its First Settlement to the year 1815, with a Consideration of their Causes, Phenomena, and Treatment. Boston: T. B. Wait & Sons, 1815. Accessed 2-7-2018 at: https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/bookviewer?PID=nlm:nlmuid-2555005R-bk

 

Jones, Joseph, M.D., President of the Board of Health of the State of Louisiana. Contagious and Infectious Diseases, Measures for Their Prevention and Arrest. Small Pox (Variola); Modified Small Pos (Varioloid); Chicken Pox (Varicella); Cow Pox (Variola Vaccinal): Vaccination, Spurious Vaccination Illustrated by Eight Colored Plates (Circular No. 2, Prepared for the Guidance of the Quarantine Officers and Sanitary Inspectors of the Board of Health of the State of Louisiana.). Baton Rouge: Leon Jastremski, State Printer, 1884. Accessed 2-12-2015 at: https://books.google.com/books?id=3VTboPycbBgC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

United States Bureau of the Census, Department of Commerce and Labor. Return of the Whole Number of Persons within the Several Districts of the United States. “Schedule of the whole number of Persons in the District of Vermont.” Washington, DC: Printed by order of the House of Representatives. Accessed 2-12-2018 at: https://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1800-return-whole-number-of-persons.pdf

 

Weinstock, Joanna Smith. “Samuel Thomson’s Botanic System: Alternative Medicine in Early Nineteenth Century Vermont.” Vermont History (The Proceedings of the Vermont Historical Society), Vol. 56, No. 1, Winter 1988. Accessed 2-12-2018 at: https://vermonthistory.org/journal/misc/SamuelThomsonsBotanicSystem.pdf

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Table: “Introduction of Vaccination into New York. Total Deaths from all Causes, and from Small-Pox, Measles, Scarlet Fever and Phthisis-Pulmonalis in the City of New York during a Period of Fifty Years, 1804-1853.”

[2] According to the 1800 U.S. Census (p. 21, Vermont Schedule), the population of Reading was 1,120 in that year. In that scarlet fever deaths were generally children, this was a statistically significant loss.

[3] Multiple sources note that today what was called “canker rash” was probably scarlet fever. We will refer to one, in that it concerns early Vermont medicine: Weinstock, Joanna Smith. “Samuel Thomson’s Botanic System: Alternative Medicine in Early Nineteenth Century Vermont.” Vermont History (The Proceedings of the Vermont Historical Society), Vol. 56, No. 1, Winter 1988. It is noted on page 9, that a reference to the “canker rash” was “probably a variety of scarlet fever in which the throat is ulcerated.”