Treatment rates for the pox in early modern England: a comparative estimate of the prevalence of syphilis in the city of Chester and its rural vicinity in the 1770s

Abstract

Treatment rates for the pox in early modernEngland: a comparative estimate of the prevalence of syphilis in the city of Chester and its rural vicinity in the 1770s SIMON SZRETER * ABSTRACT. This article offers an innovative attempt to construct an empirically-based estimate of the extent of syphilis prevailing in two contrasting populations in late eighteenth-century Britain. Thanks to the co-incident survival of both a detailed admissions register for Chester Infirmary and a pioneering census of the city of Chester in 1774 taken by Dr John Haygarth, it is possible to produce age-specific estimates of the extent to which adults of each sex had been treated for the pox by age 35. These estimates can be produced both for the resident population of Chester city and comparatively for the rural region immediately surrounding Chester. These are the first estimates of the prevalence of this important disease produced for the eighteenth century and they can be compared with similar figures for England and Wales c. 1911-1912.

Childlessness, celibacy and net fertility in pre-industrial England: the middle-class evolutionary advantage

“…Szreter (2017) found that in the 1770s 8% of residents in Cheshire had contracted syphilis by the age of 35, but the prevalence rate was much lower at 1% in Cheshire's rural hinterlands similar to most of the parishes in the reconstitution dataset. There is no systematic information about class gradients in syphilis prevalence until the early twentieth century when syphilis was most common among unskilled working-class men (Szreter, 2014) and therefore would not explain higher rates of childlessness among the upper classes. Prevalence rates of gonorrhoea and chlamydia were likely higher than for syphilis, but again we have no way of knowing whether these also produced a class gradient.…”

Histories of the pox

“…Szreter is careful to present these numbers as a “probabilistic estimate” based on detailed and thoughtful analysis. He also admits, “there is no claim here that all who were judged to have the pox must definitely have had syphilis” (Szreter, 2017, p. 209). Despite these important caveats, these endeavors are premised on the notion that our modern‐day syphilis is the disease that most early modern pox sufferers “really” had and that we can trace it with relative certainty in the historical record.…”