MALARIA, MOSQUITOES AND THE ESSEX MARSHES 41
omit, on the women's account, namely, that I took notice of the
strange decay of the sex here; inasmuch, that all along this
county it is very frequent to meet with men that have had from
five or six to fourteen and fifteen wives; nay, and some more;
and I was informed, that in the marshes, on the other side of
the river, over against Candy Island, there was a farmer, who was
then living with his five and twentieth wife; and that his son,
who was but thirty-five years old, had already had about four-
teen. Indeed, this part of the story, I only had by report, though
from good hands, but the other is well known, and easy to be
inquired into, about Fobbing, Curringham, Thundersley, Benfleet,
Prittlewell, Wakering, Great Stambridge, Cricksea, Burnham.
Dengy, and other towns on the like situation. The reason, as a
merry fellow told me, who said he had had about a dozen and a
half wives (though I found afterwards that he fibbed a little) was
this: that they, being bred in the marshes themselves, and
seasoned to the place, did pretty well with it. but that they al-
ways went up into the hilly country, or, to speak their own
language, into the uplands, for a wife; that when they took the
young lasses out of the wholesome and fresh air, they were
healthy, fresh, clear and well; but when they came out of their
native air into the marshes among the fogs and damps, they
presently changed their complexion, got an Ague or two and
seldom held it above half a year or a year at most; and then,
said he, we go to the uplands again, and fetch another; so that
marrying of wives was reckoned a good farm to them. It is true,
the fellow told this in a kind of drollery and mirth; but the fact,
for all that, is certainly true, and that they have abundance of
wives by that very means. Nor is it less true that the inhabitants
of these places do not hold it out, as in other countries".
Defoe also recorded that Londoners who go shooting in the
Essex Marshes, "often return with an Essex Ague on their Backs,
which they find a heavier load than the Fowls they have shot".
It was shortly after this, in 1740 in fact, that the term
'mal'aria' appears to have been first used in English—by Horace
Walpole writing from Italy, and this term emphasised the line of
thought on the cause of the disease, that continued right into the
20th century.
Although Cinchona Bark had been discovered as a specific
remedy as early as 1638, it was not until 1820 that a method of
extracting the quinine was found. It the meantime and, of
course, later, other remedies flourished. In the Essex Review
(1914), the Reverend A. Clark contributed an article based on an
old pocket-book—'Thomas Beadle, His Book, 1746'. Thomas
died in 1777, and the book was continued by his son, John. Both
farmed in Great Leighs. One entry reads, "Medical Prescription :
A remedy for the Ague. Take a large onion. Make a large hole
in it, big enough to put a large Nutmegg in; and roast it before
the fire until the Nutmegg is soft. Then cut the Nutmegg into a