As was anticipated, fever rose to a fearful height in 1847.  And, say the Commissioners of Health, “the state of the medical institutions of Ireland was, unfortunately, such as peculiarly unfitted them to afford the required medical aid, on the breaking out of the epidemic.  The county infirmaries had not provision for the accommodation of fever patients.  The county fever hospitals were destitute of sufficient funds; and dispensaries, established for the purpose of affording only ordinary out-door medical relief, could, of course, afford no efficient attendance on the numbers of destitute persons, suffering from acute contagious diseases in their own miserable abodes, often scattered over districts several miles in extent.”

In January, fever complicated with dysentery and small pox became very rife in Belfast, and accounts from various other places soon showed, that it had seized upon the whole country.  The week ending the 3rd of April, the total number of inmates in Irish Workhouses was 104,455, of whom 9,000 were fever patients.  The deaths in that week were 2,706, and the average of deaths in each week during the month was twenty-five per thousand of the entire inmates—­a death rate which would have hurried to the grave, every man, woman, and child in the Workhouses of Ireland, in about nine months! but it gradually decreased, until in October it stood at five per thousand in the week.

On the 19th we read that, “the number suffering from fever in Swinford is beyond calculation.”  Some idea of the dreadful mortality now prevalent in Cork, may be found from the fact, that in one day thirty-six bodies were interred in the same grave; the deaths in the Workhouse there from the 27th of December, 1846, until the middle of April—­less than four months—­amounted to 2,130.  At this period, dropsy, the result of starvation, became almost universal.  On the 16th of April, there were upwards of three hundred cases of fever in the Carrick-on-Shannon Workhouse, and the weekly deaths amounted to fifty.  Again:  every avenue leading to the plague-stricken town of Macroom has a fever hospital; persons of all ages are dropping dead in the streets.  In May, it is announced that fever continued to rage with unabated fury at Castlebar.  “Sligo is a plague spot; disease in every street, and of the worst kind.”  “Fever is committing fearful ravages in Ballindine, Ballinrobe, Claremorris, Westport, Ballina, and Belmullet, all in the county of Mayo.”  From Roscommon the news came, that the increase of fever was truly awful; the hospitals were full, and applicants were daily refused admission; “no one can tell,” says the writer, “what becomes of these unfortunate beings; they are brought away by their pauper friends, and no more is heard of them.”  “Seven bodies were found inside a hedge,” in the parish of Kilglass; the dogs had the flesh almost eaten off.  Under date of the 18th of May, I find this entry; “Small pox, added to fever and dysentery, is