English poet Christina Rosetti (1830-1894) wrote about this time of the year in her “Christmas Carol#.”

“In the bleak mid-winter

Frosty wind made moan

Earth stood still as iron,

Water like a stone

Snow had fallen, snow on snow,

Snow on snow,

In the bleak mid-winter

Long ago.#”

Some of us in the town of Victory are sneezing with colds, bronchitis or flu, but hope you will enjoy some thoughts on sickness and wellness. We are in mid-winter and it has been bleak with such cloudy days and cold temperatures, but we certainly have many comforts and medicine that people of #“long ago#” didn't have.

While conducting research and going through cemetery records, it is apparent that many early pioneer families died from epidemics in the small towns and not always in mid-winter.

In May of 1822, many in the Spickerman family of Victory perished within days of each other from some kind of disease. Many in the Rumsey family died in the fall of 1848. They all lived in a settlement near the French cemetery, just west of the village with the Griswald, Hamilton and Wetherby families.

Also in the French cemetery is #“our little Susie (Thompson)#” who died at the age of 4 in 1863.

In the Victory Union Cemetery is #“our” Freddie (Knapp), who also died in 1863 at just 3 months of age. In the picture, a miniature sheep effigy on top of the stone probably signifies the #“Lamb of God#” as seen on many infants' graves. Gracia Coppernoll died of scarlet fever in 1877 at the age of 5. Many other stones simply say #“baby,#” #“our little child,”# “twins” or #“infant son or daughter.#”

Many of my Irish relatives may have died in the 1832 cholera epidemic in Sligo, Ireland or from the effects of #“Black '47,#” when the potato famine hit Ireland in the late 1840s supposedly due to infected seed imported from Mexico. Before that, in the 1300s, was the Black Death (bubonic plague) starting in China, carried west by traveling merchants, and killing nearly one-third of the people in Europe.

Then in 1630, a plague killed half of Ontario's Huron Indians and in 1663, the Susquehannock Indians were weakened by an outbreak of smallpox.

In 1875, the Victory #“Home Weekly#” reported that there was an outbreak of typhoid and that quarantine signs had been set up on the roads leading into town.

We are certainly indebted to those physicians who studied the germ theory of disease - microbiologist and chemist, Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), bacteriologist Robert Kock (1843-1910), and others.

Of special note is the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak which hit after World War I and was especially felt in the north end of Cayuga County as it affected some of my Ira Baldwin relatives according to the following story clipping from Dec. 21, 1918, which was given to me by Marian Houghtaling of Cato (former Victory resident).

The report goes, #“On Thanksgiving Day, Agnes Baldwin, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. C.H. Baldwin of Ira, was married to Ernest Chapman and the couple left for a two-week honeymoon on the Hudson. On their return, they both took ill with influenza. Ernest died at 8:40 Thursday and his bride three hours later.

The clergyman, who united them in marriage less than a month ago, will officiate at their double funeral. They will be buried in White (Ira Union) Cemetery near where they lived. He was 22 and she was 21.#8.”

Also, from Victory, Lena Houghtaling reported that while attending high school in 1918 in Cato (she took her mare and cutter to get there), the principal, Mr. Walter Flier, and his wife became ill with the influenza and both died.

There was also a reported outbreak of scarlet fever in 1939 in Victory. If you aren't too put off by all this talk of epidemics, I also find of interest the old names for medical problems. Brights disease, named for English physician, Richard Bright (1789-1858), was kidney disease (glumerulo-nephritis); consumption was tuberculosis, dropsy was a generalized edema (fluid collection) in the body, and quinsy was an abscess around the tonsils and called a #“severe inflammation of the throat.#” If a disease was fast-paced, it was called #“galloping,#” as in galloping pneumonia. In the 1950s, polio mellitus (infantile paralysis) was a threat and afflicted people. They sometimes had to be put in an iron lung for breathing.

Help came in the late 50s with the Salk polio injections and in the 1960s with the Sabin vaccine, the little saturated pink sugar cube (I remember standing in line and taking that).

We have had some serious health threats in later years - the Legionnaires' disease outbreak in 1976 in Philadelphia, the Swine Flu threat in 1976, AIDS recognized in the 1980s, the plague outbreak in 1994 in India with more than 700 dead, and sporadic outbreaks of the seasonal flu.

Thanks to those in the field of medical research for the inventions, discoveries and medicine that keep us in the good health of today.

With the advent of computer development and modern scanning, the opportunities for early detection and excellent health abound today.

Many tests thought to be innovative a few years ago are now routine, preventive medicine. Here's to your good health!

Beverly Sayles is the Victory town historian.