In the great mass of cases in every part of the country, in the rural districts and in the places of commercial pressure, the attacks of disease are upon those in full employment, the attack of fever precedes the destitution, not the destitution the disease. There is strong evidence of the existence of a large class of persons in severe penury in some places, as in Glasgow, being subject to fever, but the fever patients did not, as a class, present evidence of being in destitution in any of the places we examined. Dr. William Davidson, the senior physician of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, who has written a Treatise on the Sources and Propagation of Continued Fevers, for which the prize instituted by Dr. Thackeray, of Chester, was unanimously awarded at the annual meeting of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, states in that treatise, when speaking of the influence of delicacy of constitution as a predisposing cause of fever,—
“We have kept a record of the physical habit of the patients admitted into the Glasgow Fever Hospital from May 1st to November 1st, 1839, and the following were the divisions adopted:—
“1. Moderate, by which is meant a person having an ordinary quantity of muscle and cellular substance.
“2. Full or plethoric, having an extra quantity of adipose texture or of blood.
“3. Muscular.
“4. Spare.
“5. Emaciated or unhealthy in appearance.
| Males. | Females. | Total. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moderate | 116 | 93 | 209 |
| Full or Plethoric | 28 | 73 | 101 |
| Muscular | 44 | 44 | |
| Spare | 24 | 41 | 65 |
| Unhealthy or Emaciated | 2 | 8 | 10 |
| 429 |
“The whole of these 429 cases were characterized by the typhoid eruption, and will therefore be considered as decided cases of typhus. It appears from this table that there were only 10 cases in an emaciated or unhealthy condition; and almost all of them, as far as could be ascertained, were engaged in their ordinary occupations at the time of their seizure. The spare and unhealthy, when added together, only form about 17 per cent. of the whole number.”
He gives two tables of the proportionate numbers of persons admitted, during the year 1839, into the Glasgow Fever Hospital, whose persons were clean or filthy:—