Title page from "An Account of the Disease..."
Medical mysteries are a popular genre — or subgenre, depending on how you classify it! The details of Napoleon’s poisoning, the exact violence used on the Romanovs or Rasputin, or the “Black Dahlia” murder are historical narratives that still get readers. Alongside these large-scale stories, though, there are smaller puzzles in the history of medicine and science.
In 1822, strange symptoms began to appear among the prisoners at Millbank Penitentiary in London, close to the Thames. (The site is now occupied by the Tate Gallery.) It began with a loss of energy, continued with marks on the skin, and diarrhea. Both male and female prisoners showed symptoms, although some prisoners were relatively unaffected.
Doctors Roget and Latham were called in to examine the prisoners and give their professional opinions as to the cause of the mysterious disease. While Victorian prisons were meant to be tough houses of reform — prisoners were still kept at hard labor despite their symptoms — they weren’t meant to kill those who had not been actually sentenced to death.
In 1823, Latham wrote An Account of the Disease Lately Prevalent in the General Penitentiary detailing the researches that he and Doctor Roget made into the symptoms and progress of the disease, including what they learned from autopsies of those who died and the eventual removal of prisoners from Millbank in order to preserve their health.
While the solution to the “mystery” is revealed in the first few pages, Latham’s book still makes for good reading as he expounds on the detective work he and Doctor Roget did to track down the disease and what they learned from their work.
As always, for more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!