Note 19 — Chapter XI

Washington took cold on that occasion. In his diary, the following Monday, he recorded: “The day being rainy and stormy, myself much disordered by a cold and inflammation in my left eye, I was prevented from visiting Lexington,” etc. Sullivan, in his Familiar Letters, tells us that, for several days afterward, a severe influenza prevailed at Boston and in its vicinity, and was called the Washington influenza. It may not be inappropriate to mention that a similar epidemic prevailed all over New England and a part of New York, after the visit of President Tyler to Boston, in 1843, which was called the Tyler grippe.