ï~~LIAM OSLER D., NEW YORK kristophanes, The Clouds cum suum Stephani Bergleri (1760) G ion now;dom's culture, rth in works;y. Paraphrase by A. G. G. EPIDEMICS OF INFLUENZA IN 1647, 1789-90 AND 1807 AS RECORDED BY NOAH WEBSTER, BENJAMIN RUSH, AND DANIEL DRAKE BY GUY HINSDALE, M.D., HOT SPRINGS, VA. HE earliest record of influenza in America was made by Hubbard, whose "Manuscript"' informs us that: "In the year 1647 an epidemical sickness passed through the whole country of New England both among Indians, English, French and Dutch. It began with a cold and in many was accompanied with a light fever. Such as bled, or used cooling drinks, generally died; such as made use of cordials, and more strengthening, comfortable things, for the most part recovered. "It seems to have spread through the whole coast, at least all the English Plantations in America, for in the Island of Christophers and Barbadoes there died 5 or 6ooo in each of them. Whether it might be called a plague or pestilential fever, physicians must determine. It was accompanied in those islands with a great drought, which burnt up all their potatoes and other fruits, which brought the provisions of New England into great request with them, who before that time had looked upon New England as one of the poorest, most despicable, barren parts of America." Noah Webster, the famous lexicographer, in his "Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases," published in Hartford, Conn., in 1799, in two volumes, gives in chronological order a list of epidemics of "influenza or epidemic catarrh," dating in Europe from A.D. 1174, and in America from 1647. In this remarkable list of 44 instances of influenza there are most interesting notes of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and comets, since it was the fashion in those days to associate something supernatural with the outbreak of a pestilence. So we read that the epidemic of 1174 was "the year 1 William Hubbard's Manuscript, Massachusetts Historical Society "Collections," 2d Series, VI, 531, 532. The author is indebted to Mr. Worthington C. Ford for the transcript. Teis a slight confusion here. According to Winthrop the drought preceded the pestilence.-H. 721