Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 4.djvu/309

 Rh and bad times, and the change of the more solid diet of former times (particularly among women) for the sloppy meals of these tea-drinking days?

Dyspepsia.—During my residence at Penzance, the proportion of cases of dyspepsia among the poor, that came under my notice, was much greater than I have met with in any other situation. The proportion of cases in three years, as recorded in the second column of the Dispensary table, was more than 1 in 5 of the whole diseases, viz. 1 in 4.8; and the proportion during the remaining two years of my residence was not inferior. It seems certain, however, that this proportion is beyond the average of what is observed in the district, since we find that the numbers received into the Dispensary, both previously and subsequently to my visit, bore a considerably less proportion to the other cases of disease. Indeed, it will be seen by the results of table A, that the average proportion of dyspeptic to other cases, during the whole seventeen years, is only 1 in 9—a proportion which is as much below that of the London tables as mine was above it. The marked increase of dyspepsia, in recent times, was corroborated by the testimony of the old practitioners, and they did not consider the increase as produced only by the recent distresses of the people, but as having progressively increased through the change of habits since the days of their early practice. All the resident practitioners considered dyspepsia to be habitually more prevalent among miners, than among the males of the other classes of the labouring population. Some attributed it to long fasting while under ground; others to the impure