Plagues, epidemics and other misfortunes in early Irish history

In 1856, Part V of the report of the Census of Ireland for 1851 was published, co-authored by William Donnelly (Registrar General and Chief Commissioner), Dr William Wilde (Assistant Commissioner) and Henry Wilkie (Acting Secretary) (Donnelly et al. Reference Donnelly, Wilde and Wilkie1856). Dr William Wilde, now best known as father of the playwright, Oscar, was a prominent surgeon and author of numerous works on medicine, archaeology and folklore (Wilson, Reference Wilson1942; Coakley, Reference Coakley2016). Wilde was knighted in 1864 owing in large part to his work on the census (Froggatt, Reference Froggatt1965; Froggatt, Reference Froggatt2016; Geary, Reference Geary2016).

The 1856 Census report that Wilde co-authored provided a fascinating summary of Ireland’s long history of outbreaks, epidemics and pandemics:

The causes of these events were many and varied:

Wilde and colleagues showed a shrewd understanding of the epidemiology of infectious diseases that is just as relevant to COVID-19 as it was in ancient Ireland:

Exploring the early Irish literature, Wilde and colleagues found particularly ‘striking’ accounts of ‘the first and second outbreaks of the Blefed, or Buidhe Connail – the great Yellow Plague, which devastated Ireland in the sixth and seventh centuries’ (p.6). They went on to present a detailed ‘Table of Cosmical Phenomena, Epizootics, Famines and Pestilences in Ireland’ starting in ‘the Pagan or Pre-Christian Period’ and drawn, in large part, from the ‘Annals of the Four Masters’, chronicles of medieval Irish history complied in the 1630s. The first entry in the Table recounted the deaths of 5000 men and 4000 women in one week in ‘the place now called Tallaght near Dublin’ owing to ‘some sudden epidemic’ which was ‘the first recorded pestilence in Ireland’ (p. 41). The precise nature of this epidemic remains obscure.

The 1856 table compiled by Wilde and colleagues continues with an astonishing succession of epidemics, plagues, cosmic events and unfortunate occurrences, some of dubious veracity. The Annals of Innisfallen, for example, recorded that, in 569 AD there was ‘(Bolgach) smallpox amongst the people’ (p.47). Wilde and colleagues were sceptical: ‘This is the first notice of this disease in the Irish annals, and one of the earliest references thereto in any European authority. As it is not, however, verified in any other annal, the epidemic alluded to was probably the leprosy, then epidemic’.

The Annals of Boyle recorded ‘a great pestilence (mortalitas magna), that is the Buidhe Chonnaill’ in the (ominous) year of 666 (p.52). ‘Diarmaid and Blathmac, the two Kings of Ireland, died, as did Fechin of Fore, and many others thereof”. In 675, ‘there reigned a kind of great leprosie in Ireland this year, called the Pox, in Irish, Bolgagh’. This, according to Wilde and colleagues, ‘evidently was the small-pox, of which many distinguished persons died’.

Mysteries and tragedies abounded. In 678, ‘Lough Neagh was turned into blood’. The following year saw ‘universal pestilence’ as ‘England and Ireland were ravaged by it in 679; and in 680, during July, August and September, Rome was laid waste’. The year 695 saw ‘the cattle pestilence’ and there was ‘a great cow mortality’ in 707 (p.54). In 742, there was both ‘the Bolgach - small-pox’ and ‘dragons seen in the sky’ (p.55). In 814, there was ‘a great disease (Scath mor) and heavy sickness (Tromghalar)’ (p.59). Some entries in the Table are deeply obscure: in 847, for example, ‘Felym MacCriowhayn was overtaken by a great flux of the belly’. No further explanation is offered.

The Annals of Ulster recorded ‘a great Leprosy (Clamthruscad mor, scaly leprosy or mange) and running of blood (Ruith fola, Dysentery) upon the Gentiles of Dublin’ in 950 (p.63). Wilde and colleagues felt that this was an especially significant report:

Bubonic plague, typhus, cholera, dysentery, smallpox and the Spanish flu

The ‘Black Death’, or Bubonic plague, raged in Ireland from 1348 to 1350, and it is likely that between a quarter and a third of the population died during the first outbreak, according to Joseph Robins (Reference Robins1995) in his invaluable book, The Miasma: Epidemic and Panic in Nineteenth Century Ireland. There were several more epidemics of plague which only declined across Europe in the mid-17th century, at which point typhus and dysentery became the chief threats. Smallpox, too, was major cause of death in 18th-century Ireland. An epidemic of typhus developed between 1816 and 1819 and was followed by cholera in the 1830s.

Wilde and colleagues described an earlier outbreak of typhus in 1225, based on the Annals of the Four Masters (p.77), and demonstrated clear links between illness, famine and conflict:

These themes were again in evidence during the Great Irish Famine of 1845 to 1849 which saw epidemics of typhus, cholera, dysentery and smallpox, as well as ‘mental disease’ which ‘bore its part in the list of calamities, upon which it is our duty to report’ (p.254). ‘The receptions into Lunatic Asylums…greatly increased and the deaths from insanity [became] greater from 1847 to 1850’ as part of ‘that great calamity which befel this country during the years of famine and pestilence’.

The 19th century was also the great asylum-building era in Ireland, when large public institutions were erected for the mentally ill right across the country (Kelly, Reference Kelly2016). The new asylums were immediately overcrowded, fuelling fevered speculation that the rate of mental illness was increasing uncontrollably in Ireland (and elsewhere). It is now clear that Ireland never had an epidemic of mental illness (Brennan, Reference Brennan2014), but, at the time, this panic was slow to subside, fuelled by the ever-expanding institutions, ill-advised mental health legislation and alarmist reports in professional and popular media.

The early 20th century also saw the most dramatic pandemic of recent history, the global influenza pandemic or ‘Spanish flu’ that killed at least 50 million people worldwide between the spring of 1918 and the winter of 1919 (Honigsbaum, Reference Honigsbaum2018). In Ireland, the flu infected almost 800 000 people and more than 20 000 died (Beiner et al. Reference Beiner, Marsh and Milne2009; Milne, Reference Milne2018). The pandemic had enormous effects across Irish society (Milne, Reference Milne2018). The large, overcrowded asylums were hit especially hard: a fifth of all patients in Belfast asylum died of the flu, and one patient in every seven in the asylums in Kilkenny, Castlebar, Maryborough and Armagh fell victim (Robins, Reference Robins1986; Kelly, Reference Kelly2016).

Tuberculosis was another persistent problem in Ireland through much of the 20th century, becoming the leading cause of death in Irish children in the 1930s (Ferry, Reference Ferry2019). It, too, was especially problematic in the mental hospitals (Kelly, Reference Kelly2016). The tuberculosis epidemic did not end until the late 1950s as a result of testing, vaccination and effective antibiotics. The advent of COVID-19 in early 2020 prompted many media comparisons of the new coronavirus virus with not only the Spanish flu and tuberculosis but also HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003 (SARS, which caused no deaths in Ireland) and the influenza pandemic of 2009 (‘swine flu’, which caused 27 deaths in Ireland) (Bielenberg, Reference Bielenberg2020). Such comparisons are interesting and useful provided they are accompanied by an awareness that the medical, social, political and economic circumstances of each outbreak can be quite different (Peckham, Reference Peckham2020). As a result, each outbreak, epidemic and pandemic is, in many ways, unique.

What can we learn from plagues, pandemics and epidemics in Irish history prior to COVID-19?

A century after the Spanish flu pandemic, COVID-19 emerged in China during the last week of December 2019 (WHO, 2020a). As was the case in 1918, the new virus presents two clear challenges to the world: the illness caused by the virus itself and the anxiety and panic that it triggers around the globe (Cullen et al. Reference Cullen, Gulati and Kelly2020; Kelly, Reference Kelly2020a; Milne, Reference Milne2020). The ubiquity of speculative and false information about COVID-19 presents particular problems to public understanding and rational management of the outbreak (Cookson, Reference Cookson2020; Harford, Reference Harford2020).

This problem is not new. Exaggerations, rumours, myths and falsehoods also abounded during the Spanish flu pandemic, causing confusion, distress and a great deal of panic (Foley, Reference Foley2011). Today, social media are especially prone to such issues (Lanier, Reference Lanier2018). In February 2020, the WHO took specific steps to counter the inaccuracies and conspiracy theories that were spreading in both social and conventional media (Lancet, 2020a; Zarocostas, Reference Zarocostas2020). Various medical journals made reliable information available for healthcare professionals (Lancet, 2020b; Razai et al. Reference Razai, Doerholt, Ladhani and Oakeshott2020). These steps are important. The experience of the Spanish flu clearly demonstrates the power of myths to persist and the urgent requirement for calm, factual information to counteract unhelpful panic.

Another key lesson from the Spanish flu is that pandemics have profound and lasting psychological effects on the population. Milne (Reference Milne2018) writes about the emotional effects of the Spanish flu, exploring the losses that people suffered and the psychological traumas that lasted, in many cases, for a lifetime. It is important to recognise these long-term psychological effects during all phases of the pandemic and to offer psychological interventions to people directly affected by the virus (Duan & Zhu, Reference Duan and Zhu2020).

Regrettably, some of the public health measures designed to control transmission, such as isolation and quarantine, can have negative effects on psychological well-being. While these measures are effective for controlling the spread (Hellewell et al. Reference Hellewell, Abbott, Gimma, Bosse, Jarvis, Russell, Munday, Kucharski, Edmunds, Funk and Eggo2020), strategies such as quarantine are also associated with specific stressors, such as fear of infection, frustration, boredom and problems stemming from inadequate supplies and insufficient information (Brooks et al. Reference Brooks, Webster, Smith, Woodland, Wessely, Greenberg and Rubin2020). After quarantine, there can be concerns about finances and stigma, among other matters. These negative effects can be ameliorated by terminating quarantine as soon as possible, providing adequate information and supplies, reducing boredom and improving communication.

As was the case during the Spanish flu pandemic (Milne, Reference Milne2018), many children’s lives have been deeply disrupted by COVID-19. The problems are particularly acute in children who are largely confined to home owing to school closures, family illness or physical distancing. In this setting, it important that children are guided about online learning, but are not overburdened with work; that parents work with schools to ensure healthy lifestyles and that good diet, personal hygiene and sleep habits are encouraged (Wang et al. Reference Wang, Zhang, Zhao, Zhang and Jiang2020). It can also be useful for parents to have direct conversations with children about the outbreak in order to alleviate their anxieties.

One of the greatest psychological challenges of a prolonged pandemic is learning to live with uncertainty not only about the virus (Vetter et al. Reference Vetter, Eckerle and Kaiser2020) but also about the outbreak’s long-term effect on our societies and our way of life (Harari, Reference Harari2020; Jenkins, Reference Jenkins2020; Mance, Reference Mance2020; Naughton, Reference Naughton2020; Ord, Reference Ord2020). Both the epidemics during the Great Irish Famine and the Spanish flu had profound effects on Irish society (Robins, Reference Robins1995; Foley, Reference Foley2011; Milne, Reference Milne2018). In this context, it is important, in the current pandemic, to find time to reflect on one’s thoughts and emotions about such uncertainty (Chödrön, Reference Chödrön2016; Kelly, Reference Kelly2020a), to care for one’s physical health, giving particular priority to sleep (Walker, Reference Walker2017) and to follow the mental health guidance provided by the WHO (2020c), US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2020) and US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (2014).

From the perspective of psychiatry, one of the other lessons from the epidemics and pandemics of the past is that not everyone suffers equally: the poor suffered disproportionately during the epidemics of the Great Irish Famine, and people with mental illness were especially vulnerable to the Spanish flu. The reason at that time was that so many of the mentally ill were confined in large, unhygienic mental hospitals through which the flu spread at high speed (Kelly, Reference Kelly2016). Today, mental health care is, for the most part, based in the community, but there is still every reason to believe that people with mental illness are at increased risk.

Even prior to COVID-19, it was known that people with mental illness still have a lower life expectancy and poorer physical health than the general population (Rodgers et al. Reference Rodgers, Dalton, Harden, Street, Parker and Eastwood2018). This places the mentally ill at increased risk in a pandemic, especially for community transmission of the virus. This also underlines the importance of continued multi-disciplinary care during the outbreak, despite the inevitable difficulties involved in delivering such care.

Looking to the future more broadly, there is moderately strong, long-standing evidence that prenatal infection with viruses, such as influenza, might increase the risk of schizophrenia in offspring in later life (Kępińska et al. Reference Kępińska, Iyegbe, Vernon, Yolken, Murray and Pollak2020). This possibility suggests a need for longitudinal follow-up studies of babies born during or soon after the current COVID-19 pandemic, to assess their developmental indices as they grow and their risk of various mental illnesses in later life. More immediately, this line of research emphasises the importance of public health measures to control transmission of COVID-19 in the first place, including rapid testing, isolation of cases and general physical distancing.

All of these measures require broad-based community support in order to be effective. In early March 2020, the WHO Director-General (2020) emphasised the need for ‘solidarity’ in the face of COVID-19. For all of us, and for people with mental illness in particular, this ‘solidarity’ is essential if we are to learn the lessons of the epidemics and pandemics of Irish history and minimise the impact of COVID-19 on physical and mental health today.