Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 4.djvu/305

 Rh regarded the disease as extremely rare, and equally so among miners as others.

Gout.—Here, as elsewhere, this disease is nearly confined to the classes of society not depending on bodily labour for subsistence. I have only one observation to make respecting its prevalence in this district, which struck me at the time as remarkable, and, if really true, is certainly deserving attention. Two of the oldest practitioners in the district, each resident in a small country town, assured me that, in their earlier practice, that is forty or fifty years before, gout was much more frequent than at present—in the proportion, they said, of a hundred to one! Has this remark been made elsewhere? If true, generally or partially, is the fact a consequence and a proof of the more general prevalence of temperate habits?

Diseases of the Heart.—I have no remark to make on this class of diseases, except to express my belief, founded partly on reasoning and partly on my own observation, that miners are more subject to organic changes of this organ, particularly dilatation, than most other classes of workmen. The causes of such a morbid state, in this class of persons, stand out prominently, both in their habits and diseases. The extreme strain on the respiratory and circulatory organs produced in the ascent from mines, described in the first part of this paper, and the chronic obstructions to the transmission of blood through the lungs, so frequent a form of disease in this class of persons, as will be shewn more particularly hereafter, are strikingly calculated to produce these affections. Palpitation is returned, by the