Thomas Beddoes to Davies Giddy, 2 May 1803
Dear Giddy
I thought to reply to your last letter immediately – but something intervened; & where a breach is once made between intention & action it is apt to go on widening – I want particularly to know your principles for a school & college – I suppose you some knowledge of causes as ingredients of effective mortals – the term & the idea ‘able-bodied’ is too much confined to seamen –
The present <late> epidemic, as far as far as I can conflate by the communications of medical men & my own observation has immediately destroyed or rendered consumptive from 200 to 500 people Now I believe I prevented it in all the families I saw by acid fumes – & if I can render it tolerably probable as I & most others, who looked sharp, believe, that it is contagious, I shall be able to persuade these who practice, when it appears next, to extinguish it at once – This is remote – but what can a medical man, or any man, do better?
By proposing these queries, with the expressed condition of being allowed to publish them, to your medical neighbours any where at Penzance, Marazion & c you wd oblige me – I have latterly added a query to induce practitioners to compare the exceptions in measles &c & in influenza – for the exceptions are the early cause of scepticism – that is, where one only in a family has the complaint & there is no intended or casual separation –
The date is of great importance – for if you can disprove the operation of ye atmosphere, you do much towards establishing contagion – & it is a certain fact that in all the variations of distinct temperature of the wind, the influenza has begun in one place or another. And it is hard to suppose a given quality of the air to persist under such variations –
I hear different chemists are at work to produce another revolution in chemistry – The great base of the great theory, the composition of water, seems improbable after the production of oxygen & hydrogen in 2 masses fm water – The defensive suppositions seem very forced –
T.B.
I wish you wd read Delphine – When I am to tell a person what I think of the author’s power in rendering sentiments, I can hardly think of any comparison but Shakespeare – The richness of observation & variety of character far exceeds any fiction of the sort that I know. They say it is a bad book in its tendency – I cannot say that placing myself in the situation of a character to be formed, I am sensible of any bad impression from the whole of the book –
My wife is writing to your sister – You would guess that I write on this because I have no other copy of my queries –
If you succeed in collecting any considerable quantity of matter, perhaps you cd send it some way through an MP There is no one here at present I think my wife for so near her time is pretty well
Yrs always
Thomas Beddoes
PS. I nearly forgot to say that I am almost sure nitrous oxyd wd be a cordial beyond all cordials for your father – I have now two invalids who had been generally broken down, quite repaired by it – I have seen its renovating powers in extreme old age – You know there is no risque in a constitution & at a time of life like your father’s – The trouble of having is not, I resume, to be set in competition against any great accession of comfort – T.B.
1. Are you able to judge from your own observations whether the Influenza is contagious, or otherwise?
2. What was the nature of the observations that fixed your opinion?
3. On comparing a number of cases, do you think the influenza distinguishable from a common catarrh?
4. In single instances, did not the symptoms so much resemble those of common catarrh as to render you doubtful whether they belonged to that or to the influenza?
5. On various occasions, was there not greater and more sudden depression that is almost every seen in common catarrh; and did not the disorder appear, at various times, in almost all the gradations from pneumonia to low fever?
6. On what day did you see the first case of well-marked influenza? – and on what day the last?
Address: Davies Giddy Esq / [xxxx] / [xxxx] / [xxxx] Bideford // Tredrea / Marazion / Cornwall /
Endorsement: Doctor Beddoes / 1803 / May the 2d
Postmark: BRISTOL / MAY 2 1803
MS: Cornish Archives DG 42/10