Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 4.djvu/281

 Rh but I can state this for the diseases included in the second column of table A VIII. during a period of three years, viz. 11 acute, and 43 chronic.

One class of the community, viz. miners, are much more obnoxious to chronic inflammations of the thoracic organs than the other inhabitants, as will be shewn in a subsequent part of this paper; but if it is admitted that the whole population is more liable to such diseases than in other districts, the extreme degree of prevalence among miners will excite less surprise.

The same remarks apply exactly to most of the other diseases included in table A VIII. under the general head of thoracic diseases; and if we exclude hooping cough and croup, and phthisis pulmonalis, we may safely include all the remaining affections under one head, as all partially of the same inflammatory nature, and all probably acknowledging the same general causes. These affections are catarrh and bronchitis, cough, chronic asthma and dyspnœa, pneumonia and pleurisy. Taking all these under one view, we find they constitute, within a fraction, one-eighth of the whole diseases; and if to these we add the remaining pectoral affections, hooping cough, croup, hæmoptysis, and phthisis, we find the whole sum of diseases of the chest amounting to one-sixth: an enormous proportion, certainly, and considerably, I apprehend, beyond the average of such diseases in other parts of the kingdom?

Diarrhœa and Dysentery.—These diseases appear to prevail in the ordinary proportion observed elsewhere in this country. Actual severe dysentery is