"I have known some of these Irish footemen serving in England to lay meate aside for many meales to devoure it all at one time." And again: "The wilde Irish in time of greatest peace impute covetousnesse and base birth to him that hath any corne after Christmas, as if it were a point of nobility to consume all within these festivall dayes." The Irish slovenliness or filthiness in their food, raiment and lodging was apt, he says, "to infect" the English who came to reside in their country[415].
About a generation after we come to the earliest medical account of the sicknesses of Ireland, by Gerard Boate, compiled during the Cromwellian occupation[416]. The following occurs under the head of The Looseness:
The English have given it the name of the Country Disease. The subjects of it are often troubled a great while, but take no great harm. It is easily cured by good medicines: "But they that let the looseness take its course do commonly after some days get the bleeding with it; ... and last it useth to turn to the bloody flux, the which in some persons having lasted a great while, leaveth them of itself; but in far the greatest number is very dangerous, and killeth the most part of the sick, except they be carefully assisted with good remedies."
The other reigning disease is the "Irish Ague," a continued fever of the nature of typhus:
"As Ireland is subject to most diseases in common with other countries, so there are some whereunto it is peculiarly obnoxious, being at all times so rife there that they may justly be reputed for Ireland _endemii morbi_, or reigning diseases, as indeed they are generally reputed for such. Of this number is a certain sort of malignant feavers, vulgarly in Ireland called Irish agues, because that at all times they are so common in Ireland, as well among the inhabitants and the natives, as among those who are newly come thither from other countries. This feaver, commonly accompanied with a great pain in the head and in all the bones, great weakness, drought, loss of all manner of appetite, and want of sleep, and for the most part idleness or raving, and restlessness or tossings, but no very great nor constant heat, is hard to be cured." If blood-letting be avoided and cordial remedies given, "very few persons do lose their lives, except when some extraordinary and pestilent malignity cometh to it, as it befalleth in some years." Those who recover "are forced to keep their beds a long time in extreme weakness, being a great while before they can recover their perfect health and strength."