Saturnism at Hudson's Bay: The York Factory complaint of 1833-1836

The major problem facing historians of clinical medicine is the difficulty of retrospective diagnosis. What disease (or diseases) was the leprosy of the Bible? What was the English “sweating sickness”? What diagnosis should be given for the mysterious mal de la Baie St. Paul that ravaged rural Quebec in the 1780's? The problem arises for many reasons. Some diseases have changed over the years: long before the advent of antibiotics, scarlet fever began to be less fatal and less severe amongst survivors. Syphilis, although still a serious disorder, certainly is a different disease now than it was when it devastated Western Europe in the 1490's, killing thousands. But most diseases probably have changed infrequently within historical times.