Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 4.djvu/257

 Rh more or less peculiar to the district; and such as can be traced to some circumstances in the habits, manners, customs, or other civil relations of the inhabitants.

4. Contingent or Generic diseases, or diseases of a chronic kind, not coming strictly under any of the foregoing heads, being found more or less in all countries, and among all classes of men; and which may or may not be modified by the circumstances existing in any particular district. This class might also be divided into two groups, viz. such as originate in causes which are either known or supposed to be known, and such as can be traced to no such causes.

It is proficiently obvious that neither the foregoing, nor any other arrangement of diseases, can be very accurate, as many of the diseases may be properly placed in more than one class, according to the point of view in which they are regarded: all that is aimed at or expected, is the establishment of some broad lines whereby the observer or inquirer may have his views somewhat circumscribed and directed, and the great object thus more easily attained.

In the second part of this chapter, I intended to notice, in a more particular manner, the health and diseases of the different classes of inhabitants, as set forth in the first part of this memoir, and particularly of the class of miners. It was my purpose to enter fully into this very important subject, not without hopes of being able to found, on such an exposition of the nature and causes of the diseases