At the age of sixteen CB
survived an attack of smallpox, but the year after that she fell seriously ill again (having just been practising severe religious abstinence). She was ill for seven years, with all kinds of symptoms including giddiness, spots on the skin, stomach pains, failure of appetite, shaking fits, and, she says, her bones moving out of their proper places. Her account of the remedies used on her is painfully vivid: bitter potions, sweats, vomits, bleeding, and Spanish flies,
Burton, Catharine. An English Carmelite: The Life of Catharine Burton. Editors Hunter, Thomas and Henry James Coleridge, Burns and Oates, 1876.
35
as well as vinegar on her blisters.
Burton, Catharine. An English Carmelite: The Life of Catharine Burton. Editors Hunter, Thomas and Henry James Coleridge, Burns and Oates, 1876.
38
She recovered immediately when she vowed to become a nun, and found that, for instance, her previously rigid fingers were now pliable.
Burton, Catharine. An English Carmelite: The Life of Catharine Burton. Editors Hunter, Thomas and Henry James Coleridge, Burns and Oates, 1876.
80
She therefore attributed her cure to a miracle, and thought all I could do for God too little.
Burton, Catharine. An English Carmelite: The Life of Catharine Burton. Editors Hunter, Thomas and Henry James Coleridge, Burns and Oates, 1876.
83
It does not appear that she was ever ill again, unless perhaps trivially, until shortly before her death.
Grundy, Isobel. “Women’s History? Writings by English Nuns”. Women, Writing, History 1640-1740, edited by Isobel Grundy and Susan Wiseman, Batsford and University of Georgia Press, 1992, pp. 126-38.
LAC
, along with her daughter Margaret, was ill with smallpox during her husband's last illness, and they were both unable to visit him. Although she survived the illness, it permanently scarred her face.
Spence, Richard T. Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery. Sutton Publishing, 1997.
Unspecified illnesses coming one after another kept her housebound for years. Passages in her poems suggest that she was disabled in some way and possibly disfigured (by, for instance, smallpox).
AC
suffered a severe fever before the age of twelve, which seems to have brought on a tendency to excruciating headaches. These (probably migraine) recurred throughout her life, so often as to be almost permanent. Her all-round health, too, was fragile,
Nicolson, Marjorie Hope, and Anne Conway. “Prologue”. The Conway Letters, edited by Sarah Hutton and Sarah Hutton, Clarendon Press, 1992, p. xxiii - xxix.
xxvii and n6
Conway, Anne et al. The Conway Letters. Editor Hutton, Sarah, Revised, Clarendon Press, 1992.
15-16
and the medical treatments she underwent for her headaches sound in themselves enough to ensure ill-health. She went down with smallpox shortly after her only child died of it.
Hutton, Sarah. Anne Conway: A Woman Philosopher. Cambridge University Press, 2004.
QEI
suffered an attack of smallpox which she barely survived. The question of the succession loomed, and Burghley
actually wrote a memo instructing the Privy Council
, in the event of her death, to appoint the next monarch.
Gaskill, Malcolm. “Dining with Ivan the Terrible”. London Review of Books, Vol.
40
, No. 3, 8 Feb. 2018, pp. 37-8.
37
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Soon after the women's imprisonment they were so badly stung by mosquitoes while asleep at night that their faces became as unrecognisably swollen as if they had smallpox.
Evans, Katharine, and Sarah Chevers. This is a Short Relation of some of the Cruel Sufferings. Robert Wilson, 1662.
72
Their health suffered severely from other factors, such as heat and hunger-strikes, and each one was several times near death.
CS
's face was permanently scarred by her father's amateur smallpox inoculation. Her great-niece Lucy Walford, however, felt very strongly that this fact pushed her to develop her talents and personality, making her a universal favourite.
Walford, Lucy. Recollections of a Scottish Novelist. Williams and Norgate, 1910, xi, 317 pp.
SS
was attacked by smallpox in 1688, but survived. As she grew older her sight deteriorated until she could not read a word without glasses (which made her consider that she ought to spend more time in prayer and meditation instead of reading).
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Williams, Sir John Bickerton, and Sarah Savage. Memoirs of the Life and Character of Mrs. Sarah Savage. 4th ed., Holdsworth and Ball, 1829.