The decline of adult smallpox in eighteenth-century London1
نویسندگان
چکیده
Smallpox was probably the single most lethal disease in eighteenth century Britain, but was a minor cause of death by the mid-nineteenth century. Although vaccination was crucial to the decline of smallpox especially in urban areas from the beginning of the nineteenth century, it remains disputed the extent to which smallpox mortality declined before vaccination. Analysis of age-specific changes in smallpox burials within the large West London parish of St. Martin-in-the-Fields revealed a precipitous reduction in adult smallpox risk from the 1770s, and this pattern was duplicated in the East London parish of St. Dunstan’s. Most adult smallpox victims were rural migrants, and such a drop in their susceptibility is consistent with a sudden increase in exposure to smallpox in rural areas. We investigated whether this was due to the spread of inoculation, or an increase in smallpox transmission, using changes in the age patterns of child smallpox burials. Smallpox mortality rose amongst infants, and smallpox burials became concentrated at the youngest ages, suggesting a sudden increase in infectiousness of the smallpox virus. Such a change intensified the process of smallpox endemicisation in the English population, but also made cities substantially safer for young adult migrants. 1 We would like to thank the Wellcome Trust, Award no. 081508 for funding the research on St. Martin’s Bills of Mortality, and Drs. John Black and Peter Jones for inputting the data, as well as Drs. Peter Razzell and Leigh Shaw-Taylor for commenting on earlier versions of the manuscript. We thank the anonymous referees for helpful suggestions. 2 Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, University of Cambridge 3 Department of History and Cultures, University of Birmingham 4 School of Historical Studies, University of Newcastle
منابع مشابه
The decline of adult smallpox in eighteenth-century London: a commentary.
This article is a response to Davenport, Schwarz, and Boulton's article, ‘The decline of adult smallpox in eighteenth-century London’. It introduces new data on the parish of St Mary Whitechapel which casts doubt on the pattern of the age incidence of smallpox found by Davenport et al. However, it is concluded that there was a decline in adult smallpox in London, accompanied by a concentration ...
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