ABSTRACT
The certain classes of disease arise suddenly among people previously healthy, and having increased for a series of months or years, then gradually decline or altogether disappear is well known to every observer. The gradual increase of the disease in Ireland during several years past, commencing with the year 1810, led to the adoption of various preventive measures, which in some degree prepared the country for the events expected by those in whose memory the scarcity of 1801, and the attendant fever, were still alive. In all the instances, scarcity of food, the consequence of a failure of the crops in the preceding year, had greatly contributed to further the progress of fever. In many parts of Italy so great was the famine that articles of food, which in ordinary times would have excited disgust, were eagerly sought after to appease the cravings of hunger.
