without any provision, either of space or clothing, to meet so fearful an emergency.  All these were suffering from famine, and most of them from malignant dysentery or fever.  The fever was, in the first instance, undoubtedly confined to persons badly fed, or crowded into unwholesome habitations; and, as it originated with the vast migratory hordes of labourers and their families congregated upon the public roads, it commonly was termed ‘the road fever.’  In Cloughjordan, County Tipperary, the fever cases doubled in 1846 what they had been in the previous year.  The disease commenced in Clonmel in November.  The accounts from the Counties of Limerick and Kerry do not record any increased sickness during this year.  The epidemic commenced in the County of Tyrone in the December of 1846.  Young persons were those chiefly attacked there.  The fever commenced at Loughgall, County Armagh, in the end of this year.  The lower classes were chiefly attacked; the majority of those affected having been previously in bad health.  The epidemic materially declined as the poor were better fed.  The fever was frequently preceded by scurvy.  Individuals at the age of puberty were chiefly attacked,—­females more generally than males.  In Newry, dysentery existed as an epidemic during the autumn of 1846, being very fatal among the old and infirm, who, if not carried off, were so debilitated by its effects, as to render them an easy prey to the fever which followed.  In Dublin, although the great outbreak of the fever was in 1847, yet, cases were noticed to have occurred in the latter end of 1846, in a greater proportion than usual.  Those first attacked were individuals who had been reduced by bad diet or insufficiency of food, and throughout the continuance of the epidemic, the lower classes were chiefly affected.  In many cases, the fever set in immediately after recovering from the effects of starvation, and although scurvy preceded the disease, neither it nor purpura was noticed to have occurred as a concomitant symptom.  In the Province of Connaught, the epidemic commenced in many places during the year 1846, especially in the Counties of Sligo and Leitrim; in the former locality the young were chiefly attacked; in the latter fever broke out so early as June, when upwards of two hundred cases were at one time in the Workhouse of Carrick-on-Shannon; while, in the remote northern hilly districts of the county, it did not appear until December, 1847; those attacked were, for the most part, reduced from want of food.  In some parts, the fever was preceded by aphthous ulcers on the tongue and gums; young persons were those chiefly attacked, and females more than males.  In the County of Roscommon, the previous health of the population was much impaired; bowel complaints were frequent; the fever commenced in the end of 1846 or beginning of 1847, and was very prevalent.  The Workhouse of Castlerea was one of the most severely afflicted during the epidemic, of any similar class of institution in Ireland—­as many as fifty persons a week having died at one period subsequent to this—­and, for a long time, all attempt at separate burial was found impossible.  In the County Galway the epidemic of both dysentery and fever appeared at Ahascragh and Clifden, separate ends of the district, at the end of this year."[269]