The Disappearance of Malaria from the East Anglian Fens

Abstract

Medical and social historians have long been interested in the incidence of malaria, or 'ague' , in the district of eastenl England known as 'F enland' or 'the Fens' a low-lying area of wetland extending over much of northenl Calnbridgeshire, southern Lincolnshire, and the western parts of Suffolk and Norfolk. To SOlneextent, their interest in the disease itself has been secondary to a concern with the Inore lively subject of drug abuse. 1 In the nineteenth century, opiunl eating was sufficiently prevalent in this district though by no nleans unique to it to attract the particular attention of llloral COlllmentators and social reformers. In the words of one contemporary, 'there is not a labourer's house without its pelmy stick or pill of opium' .2 The drug was used recreationally; it was regularly given to infants to keep them quiet while their nl0thers worked in the fields; and it was taken to dull the pain and alleviate the tediulll associated with heavy field work. However OpiUIll was also used to treat the synlptoms of lllalaria and lllodern historians, like the nineteenth-century conl1nentators, broadly agree that it had first come into general use for this purpose. Initially, OpiUIllhad been imbibed in the fOlm of 'Poppytea' or shnilar hOllle-Inade preparations and in the early nineteenth century it was said that 'a patch of white poppies was usually found in IllOst of the cottage gardens' .3 But in the middle and later decades of the century cOllllnercial opium and various opiunl preparations becaille available from urban chelllists, to be widely consumed.