of the different forms of dropsy with one another in the different lists, and cannot, therefore, speak as to their relative prevalence, but it struck me at the time, and the same impression is conveyed now by an inspection of the Dispensary records, that the number of cases of anasarca was unusually large. The distinction of the forms of dropsy is only given for eight years of the seventeen included in the list, and the following are the actual numbers of each kind:—Anasarca, 62; ascites, 22; hydrothorax, 3. In the three years from 1819 to 1821, out of 1096 medical cases, there were 33 cases of dropsy, and of these no fewer than 26 were of anasarca. In the answers returned to me by the resident practitioners of the district, the great frequency of dropsy, particularly of anasarca, was generally recorded. It seemed doubtful, from the evidence afforded, which of the three diseases, dropsy (particularly anasarca), pulmonic inflammation, or acute rheumatism, was of most frequent occurrence. Dropsy appeared not to affect miners, or any one class of personas more than another; unless, undeed, we reckon drunkards as a class, and as the chief of them the landlords of public houses, the greater number of whom here, as elsewhere, fall victims to their intemperance, of which some form of dropsy is the most obvious result, although itself generally a consequence of some other disease. The frequency of dropsy in this district, seems also established by the mortuary registers both of St. Paul and St. Hilary, particularly of the former, in which it bears a proportion of no less than one in twenty of the total deaths.
Among the cases of anasarca observed by me at
