Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 4.djvu/286

 184 fisherman from the parish of St. Paul. I am ignorant of the circumstances connected with the two cases that are recorded on the Dispensary books, before my connexion with it.

The same almost complete exemption from intermitting fever, not only during the period of my residence in Cornwall, but for many years previously, was confirmed to me by the testimony of all the practitioners in the district. Hardly a case had been witnessed by them for a dozen years, and very few indeed for twenty years: scarcely any of the younger practitioners had seen a case of the disease.

And yet this immunity from ague is only a comparatively recent feature in the medical history of the district. All the older surgeons were familiar with the disease in their earlier practice. Forty years before the period of my inquiries, each practitioner saw many cases every year: one, "about thirty in a twelve month;" another "five or six every spring and fall;" and a third "a great many;" and the uniform testimony of medical tradition, throughout the district, went to establish the general prevalence of the disease in the days of their fathers. The same evidence goes to prove that the disappearance of the disease has been progressive; a fact also illustrated by the official registers of the Dispensary. In the three years from 1810 to 1813, two cases occurred; in the three years from 1819 to 1822, one case occurred; in the eleven years from 1823 to 1833, not one case occurred.

There seems every reason to believe that the causes commonly assigned for the decrease of ague in England, during the last and the present centuries,