Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 4.djvu/266

 164 more than one-thirteenth of the whole. In the parish of St. Hilary there was an exemption of seven years out of twenty-eight, but the proportion of deaths from fever, to the whole mortality, was greater, being more than one-twelfth. Similar testimony, as to the habitual prevalence of continued fever in the district, is given by the Cornish historians; by Pryce, who wrote about the middle, and by Polwhele, who wrote about the end of the last century. Dr. Montgomery, the present physician of the Penzance Dispensary, informs me that continued fevers have been less prevalent in that town of late years, but that they are still of frequent occurrence in some of the country parishes.

The fever was confined to no particular localities, nor to any class of the inhabitants. It can hardly be said to have prevailed more in the villages, than in detached houses; and, indeed, the former are so common, and the latter so rare in this district, that the disease could hardly find materials but in the towns and villages. As usual, the poor and labouring classes were most obnoxious to it; but during my residence in Cornwall, not a few of the better classes of the inhabitants were affected by it. The contagious nature of the disease appeared to me unquestionable.

The continued fever of the Landsend exhibited nothing peculiar in its character. It was often very severe, long-protracted, and frequently fatal. Death occurred rarely from sudden collapse; sometimes from intestinal hemorrhage; commonly by the typhoid or comatose state, indicating an affection of