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sidering that only the poorer classes were removed
to the public hospitals, it is probable that more
than 30 per cent., or perhaps one-third of the
entire population were smitten with the epidemic,
and of these about 14 per cent. died—the mortality
of the whole of the city being not less than at the
rate of 8 per 1,000 per annum.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the reports of
the violence of the epidemic should have commanded
attention, especially as the season in
England was somewhat unhealthy, and there was
a manifest tendency to the development of diseases
of the typhoid class; but the public mind was soon
tranquillised when it was found that the fevers of
St. Petersburgh were of a local character, that they
were in fact the products of famine and overcrowding,
and were the precise counterparts of the
fevers which had devastated Ireland in 1847, after
the failure of the potato crop.
With regard to the other disease which had
appeared in an epidemic form in Brunswick, Hesse,
Hanover, and Eastern Prussia, it was ascertained
that it was an unusual form of cerebrospinal
meningitis, and had no connection whatever with
the preceding. Like the former, however, it was
strictly local in its character, and showed no tendency
to expand. It is a rare disease, and consists
c