80

The Structures o f Everyday Life

tions of their symptoms. Furthermore there is no guarantee that they are always comparable to the diseases known today. Diseases change and have a history of their own, which depends on a possible modification of bacteria and viruses and of the human landscape in which they live.15 6 Pure chance led Gaston Roupnel in 1922, with the help of a parasitologist friend, to discover that the purple fever or purpura at Dijon and elsewhere in the seventeenth century referred to exanthematic typhus (transmitted by fleas).157 Purple fever was also used to describe the disease which in about 1780 mowed down the poor Parisians of the Faubourg Saint-Marcel by the hundreds . .. the gravediggers arms were falling off. 158 We still do not know exactly what it was. What would the present-day doctor make of the plague in 1348 as described by Guy de Chauliac, whose Grande Chirurgie went into sixty-nine editions between 1478 and 1895? He gave two characteristic stages of the disease: first stage, quite long (two months), fever and spitting of blood; second stage, abscesses and pulmonary weakness. How would he diagnose the 1427 epidemic, inexplicably christened ladendo in Paris and described as a hitherto unknown malady? It begins in the back, as if one had a bad case of kidney stones, and is followed by the shivers; for eight to ten days one cannot drink, eat or sleep properly. Then there was a cough which was so bad that when listening to a sermon people could not hear what the preacher was saying because of the great noise from the coughers.159 This was undoubtedly some sort of special influenza virus, like the Spanish flu after the First World War or the Asian flu that invaded Europe in 1956-8. Estoile described another variety:
A t th e b e g in n in g o f A p r i l (1 5 9 5 ) th e K i n g ( H e n r y i v ) b e c a m e v e ry ill w i t h a c a t a r r h w h ic h d i s t o r t e d h is w h o l e fa c e . C a t a r r h s li k e th is w e r e p r e v a le n t in P a r is b e c a u s e it w a s v e r y c o ld t h e r e f o r th e tim e o f y e a r : t h e y c a u s e d s e v e ra l stra n g e a n d su d d e n d e a th s ,

with the plague [m y

ita lic s ] w h ic h s p r e a d G o d , w h ic h

in d iv e r s e p la c e s in th e t o w n ; t h e y w e r e a ll s c o u r g e s f r o m g r e a t a s a m o n g s t th e s m a l l .160

n o n e t h e le s s p r o d u c e d a s litt le v is ib le i m p r o v e m e n t in c o n d u c t a m o n g s t th e

The sweating sickness on the other hand, la suette anglaise which ravaged England from 1486 to 1551, has today disappeared. It seems to have affected the heart and lungs and caused rheumatic pains; the victims had fits of shivering and sweated profusely and were often dead within hours. There were five major outbreaks - in 1486, 1507, 1518, 1529 and 1551 - which made many victims. Oddly enough, the disease which almost always struck first in London, never reached Wales or Scotland. And the epidemic of 1529, which was particularly violent, was the only one to cross the Channel, sparing France, but striking Holland and the Netherlands, Germany and even the Swiss cantons.1 6 1 And what was thediseasethatcaused the epidemic in Madrid in August 1597 which, we are told, was non-contagious and caused swelling of groin, armpit and throat? After the fever had broken out the sufferer was either cured in five or six days and recovered slowly; or died immediately. It must be added that