ABSTRACT
These poor people, wretchedly clothed, exposed to cold and wet as deck passengers, many of them starving, and not a few of them actually labouring under disease, were ushered into our densely populated towns, there to seek the cheapest and most wretched lodging-houses or places of shelter. Fever thus became induced into their abodes, and after its induction it was kept up by a system as loathsome as culpable until the authorities, in many instances, interfered for its removal. It was impossible to put it down, however, as whenever they had their houses whitewashed and cleansed and bedclothes washed at the public expense, they resumed the same system. I had several opportunities of visiting these lodging houses occupied by the poor Irish. They in general consist of large-sized rooms, in dirty and badly aired localities (largely the poorest in the town) in which beds are arranged on the floor as thickly as they can be placed. Here all sexes and ages occupied; and when one took fever and was removed to the hospital, no cleansing took place, but the next applicant was admitted into the bed just vacated by the fever patient. In this way the disease spread. In Edinburgh almost every case admitted into the Infirmary at the beginning of the epidemic was from Ireland; and for nearly three months they continued so.
