On famine and fever as cause and effect in Ireland : with observations on hospital location, and the dispensation in outdoor relief of food and medicine / by D.J. Corrigan.

  • Corrigan, Dominic John, 1802-1880.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On famine and fever as cause and effect in Ireland : with observations on hospital location, and the dispensation in outdoor relief of food and medicine / by D.J. Corrigan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    15/40 (page 12)
    It was computed that one-fifth part of the inhabitants died, though probably with exaggeration.* * * § 1741— Spring dry; summer dry; autumn variable; winter frosty. Plenty of good corn in autumn of 1741, fruits of the earth duly maturated, winter concluded healthy, and the bills of mortality sunk conspicuously.f 1742— Spring dry; summer hot; autumn variable; winter stormy and frosty. Provisions most plentiful. Bread sold at twenty-one pounds six ounces for a shilling.:}: 1743— The summer and autumn were remarkable for health, as well as for fertility and plenty in large crops of corn of all sorts, and we had scarce any disease then or in winter, except cold and sore throat, from which we are seldom exempted.§ 1798— Summer and autumn of 1797 wet, crops scanty, fuel scarce. 1798, gentry flying out of the country; poor out of employment; tillage neglected ; consequent starvation. Fever prevalent in spring of 1798, spread in the end of summer to a frightful extent. 1799— Summer wet and cold; general deficiency in the crops. Fever now assumed a most malignant type. 1800— Summer unusually hot and dry, but followed, like the previous wet summer, by deficient crops; the crops, moreover, of very bad quality; the people in a state of starvation. Malignant fever continued from 1798. 1801— Most abundant harvest, fever began to decline, and disappeared in the summer of 1802.|| 1817—Crops of the preceding year very deficient, did not arrive at maturity ; corn was uncut in November, much of it lost. Corn saved was green in the husk, or malted; potatoes scanty, wet, unripe. No straw even for the beds of the poor ; turf also deficient. This combined deficiency * Rutty, p. 86. f Rutty, pp. 92, 123. x Rutty, p. 98. § Rutty, p 107. || Barker and Cheyne, p. 18.