116 SEVENTH REPORT—1837. 
column, which reached its lowest depression of 28°88 on the evening 
of the 21st, while the dew point nearly approximated the mean tem- 
perature. Contemporarily with this lowest state of the atmospheric 
pressure on the 21st commenced the full and rapid invasion of the 
epidemic, similar to some mighty morbific wave that was sweeping 
over the country—sudden in its attack, but more lingering in its de- 
parture. As the disease increased the temperature fell, for seven 
days, with continued rain or snow till the end of the month, but the 
barometer on the whole gradually rose until it attained 30°10 on the 
morning of the 4th of February. On the day previous to this the 
disease had reached its maximum intensity, having, in the course of a 
fortnight, laid the whole population, with very trifling exceptions, under 
its morbiferous influence, which extended from the merest malaise, or 
slight catarrh, to the most deadly impression on the functions and 
organs of life. After this culminating point of the epidemic, it gradually 
lessened in the number of its cases, though not in the severity of many 
individual instances. About the 9th of February a slight resumption of 
intensity appears on the scale, and this was occasioned by the disease 
becoming a little more rife in the country after it began to subside in 
the town; but the whole cases of fresh attack were reduced to a very 
small comparative number on the 21st, when the epidemic may be said 
to have passed over the place, after having left, and yet then leay- 
ing, many a fatal footstep behind. Cases assuming not all the well- 
marked traits of the early epidemic, but the more varied, obscure, and 
modified characters of rheumatism, neuralgia, febricula with head- 
ache, and bowel attacks with lumbar pains, continued to appear during 
the remainder of the month and the first part of March, but all these 
cases may be fairly charged to that constitutional taint or diathesis 
which the epidemic had produced. In addition to what the register 
denotes of the weather during the three months mentioned as being 
inclement, cold, and unsettled, with several falls of snow; it may be 
noticed, the invasion of the epidemic was preceded and attended by 
easterly and southerly winds, while the atmosphere was much loaded 
with moisture. This high point of saturation may be frequently 
observed to have taken place during the prevalence of the epidemic, 
for the dew point will be seen for several days to be as high, if not 
higher, than the mean temperature for the day. This anomaly in part 
arises from the dew point being only taken once in the day at noon, 
while the temperature was not only taken at that hour, which at 
all times would be higher than the dew point, but this higher tempera- 
ture would be brought down in the scale by the lower averages 
of morning and night. 
From Dr. Heberden’s Analysis of the Bills of Mortality in London, 
as published in the Medical Gazette, 8th April, 1837, it appears that 
the epidemic commenced about the 10th of January, had attained its 
height of mortality on the 24th, and ceased after six to seven weeks 
from its appearance. Dr. Clendinning, in his Report of the Maryle- 
bone Infirmary, makes the epidemic to appear on the Ist of January, 
to be at its maximum prevalence about the 20th, and to have ceased 
