40
THE ESSEX NATURALIST
terciane, or an ague". Macbeth, speaking in the castle at Dunsi-
nane, remarks of the beseiging English troops, "Here let them lie.
Till famine and the ague eat them up", but here, ague probably
refers to typhus. In Troilus and Cressida, Patroclus remarks to
Achilles, "And clanger, like an ague, subtly taints Even then when
we sit idly in the sun". The ague which paralysed Cromwell's
army in Ireland in 1650 was no doubt typhus.
One of the earliest records for Essex must be that of John
Norden who, in 1594, in his 'Historical and Chorographical
Description of the county of Essex', recorded, "But this shire
seemeth to me to deserve the title of the englishe Goshen, the
fattest of the Lande; comparable to Palestina, that flowed with
milke and hunnye. But I cannot commende the healthfulness of
it; and especiallie nere the sea coastes, Rochford Denge, Tender-
ing hundreds and other lowe places about the creekes, which gave
me a most cruell quarterne fever".
Among the Rectors of Rochford, was one Edmund Calamy
(probably 1637-1639), who accepted the Rectorship from the Earl
of Warwick 'hoping under the wings of such a patron and quieter
Bishop to have more repose; and so he had for his ministry; but
his body felt the hardship of his removal from one of the
pleasantest (Bury St. Edmunds) to one of the unhealthiest airs
in England. He was seized with a tedious quartan ague which
brought upon him a dizziness of his head that he complained of
all his life after; which was the cause of his avoiding the pulpit
and choosing rather to preach in the desk'.
It was about this time that the bark of Cinchona (an ever-
green of the family Rubiaceae) was discovered to be helpful in the
cure of fever, being first used to cure the Countess of Cinchon,
wife of the Ruler of Peru, in 1683. After this it was taken to
various places in Europe by the Jesuits and obtained the name
Jesuits' Bark. The bark contains a number of alkaloids, among
them being quinine, which is a specific for malaria. Sir William
MacArthur records that the herbarium specimen named 'quin-
quina' in Sir Hans Sloan's collection is not Cinchona of any
species, but the shrub Iva frutescens.
Sydenham, so well accepted now for the accuracy of his obser-
vations, spoke of intermittent fever (febris intermittens), probably
malaria, in epidemic form between 1661 and 1664. In Pepys'
Diary, there is a reference to the extraordinary hot and Indian
summer of 1661, which lasted right through the autumn and
early winter, into the New Year, and resulted in Parliament
ordering a Fast Day on 5th February 1662, to pray for more
seasonable weather. This extraordinary weather could well have
precipitated the epidemic of 1661-1664.
John Norden's strictures on our county were echoed by
Daniel Defoe, who. in 1722, in his 'Tour Through the Whole
Island of Great Britain by a Gentleman', wrote, "I have one re-
mark more, before I leave this damp part of the world (the
Barstable, Rochford and Dengy Hundreds) and which I cannot