Frequencies per million words for 5 epidemiologically relevant search terms in a dozen British 19th century newspapers

COVID-19 is the first known coronavirus pandemic.  Nevertheless,
the seasonal circulation of the four milder coronaviruses of humans –
OC43, NL63, 229E and HKU1 – raises the possibility that these viruses are
the descendants of more ancient coronavirus pandemics.  This
proposal arises by analogy to the observed descent of seasonal influenza
subtypes H2N2 (now extinct), H3N2 and H1H1 from the pandemic strains of
1957, 1968 and 2009, respectively.  Recent historical revisionist
speculation has focussed on the influenza pandemic of 1889-1892, based on
molecular phylogenetic reconstructions that show the emergence of human
coronavirus OC43 around that time, probably by zoonosis from
cattle.  If the “Russian influenza”, as The Times named it in
early 1890, was not influenza but caused by a coronavirus, the origins of
the other three milder human coronaviruses may also have left a residue of
clinical evidence in the 19th century medical literature and popular
press.  In this paper, we search digitised 19th century British
newspapers for evidence of previously unsuspected coronavirus
pandemics.  We conclude that there is little or no corpus
linguistic signal in the UK national press for large-scale outbreaks of
unidentified respiratory disease for the period 1785 to 1890.