Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 4.djvu/311

 Rh referred to. Distress, during the greater part of that time, prevailed throughout the kingdom, partly from failure of the crops, and partly from the state of our trade and financial relations; and this was aggravated in a ten-fold degree in the Landsend district, by the total failure of the pilchard fishery, on which the great majority of the poorer classes almost entirely depended. These general and local causes did not exist, at least in anything near the same degree, in the previous or subsequent years.

It seems probable that the very humid and relaxing climate has some effect in giving rise to this complaint, even among the native inhabitants. I am informed, by Dr. Montgomery, that the wet relaxing weather so prevalent in winter, at Penzance, is very apt to induce dyspepsia among the strangers who resort thither during that season.

The causes occasioning increased frequency of the disease, seemed also to produce greater intensity in the individual cases. At least, I never witnessed, either before or since, such extreme derangement of the digestive and assimilative functions, as among my patients at the Penzance Dispensary. It may give some idea of the general character of the cases included under this head, to state that of the 228 cases in the second column, 74 only were examples of what is more properly called dyspepsia, viz. primary derangement of the digestive functions, while 119 were cases of what may be called secondary dyspepsia, or what has been sometimes named bilious disorder exhibiting a much more extensive and profound affection of the whole chylopoietic viscera