ABSTRACT
The crowding of apartments, in order to procure warmth by a concentration of animal heat, must at the time have increased to a great degree, in consequence of the scarcity and high price of fuel, and must have contributed to favour the spreading of disease by contagion. One predominant feeling characterised all, affection toward their relatives, evinced by persevering attentions through every stage of the disease, and frequently ending in their own destruction." The causes of the disease in Munster were nearly the same as in the other provinces. Those causes which operated remotely were the extreme privations of the poor, arising from the cold and humidity of the summers and autumns of 1816–1817, the consequent failure of the crops, and of fuel, together with the cessation of demand for labour, owing to the peculiar circumstances of the country at that time.
