Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 4.djvu/280

 178 month or London. In London the relative prevalence of pleuritis and pneumonia, as deduced from the Reports of Drs. Willan and Bateman, is 1 in 47; at Plymouth, according to Dr. Woolcombe, 1 in 31; whereas, at Penzance it is 1 in 17.7. What makes this result (if, indeed, it may safely be received as a general one) more striking, is the fact that Penzance is not in the immediate vicinity of the great mines, among the population of which, as we shall shew more particularly hereafter, such pectoral affections are extremely frequent. It is, nevertheless, true that a good many chronic affections of the chest, in old miners, did find their way to the Dispensary, and, no doubt, contributed to swell the list of diseases included under the present head; still such cases were more frequently classed under the head of chronic catarrh, asthma, dyspnœa, or simple cough. If, then, we may be allowed to assume the results of the Penzance tables as affording a fair view of the relative prevalence of diseases in the district, we must admit the conclusion, that inflammatory affections of the chest are of very frequent occurrence among the inhabitants of the Landsend. The general testimony of the country practitioners, likewise, established the great prevalence of pneumonia; and all those connected with mines, regarded it as more common among miners than among the labourers on the soil. It was also a general observation of the more experienced practitioners, that the disease was more prevalent formerly than of late years.

The registers do not admit of classifying the cases into acute and chronic, for the whole space of time;