118 SEVENTH REPORT—1837. 
birth upwards to ten years of age, and which included twenty-one cases — 
of influenza, the deaths were only 57 per cent. ; between ten and twenty 
the admissions were seventy-three, including thirty-five cases of influ- 
enza, and the deaths were only about 7 per cent.; between the ages of 
twenty and thirty the deaths to the whole admissions were 13 per cent.; 
between thirty and forty the proportion was 25 per cent.; between 
forty and fifty it was 31°5 per cent.; between fifty and sixty it was 36 
per cent. ; and between sixty and seventy the ratio was still 31 per cent. ; 
the whole admissions being in the above period 465, more than half of 
which were influenza cases ; and the deaths were 98, or 22 per cent. 
From a report made by Dr. Graves, in a late number of the Medical 
Gazette, of the numbers interred at Prospect Cemetery, Glasnevin, 
during the months of December, 1835, and January, February and 
March, 1836, compared with the same months in 1836 and 1837, it 
appears that the burials were augmented from 1501 to 2248, or 33°2 
per cent. of an increase during the influenza. 
From the limited observations and register which I have had the in- 
dulgence of laying before the Section, it is seen what an extensive and 
destructive pestilence has swept over the kingdom, which has about 
doubled the ordinary rate of mortality, where it in any characteristic 
force prevailed, and thus anticipated for some months the forthcoming 
victims of death, while it threw a subsequent pause over the regular 
march of disease and mortality. This retardation has been very 
generally observed in the low rate of disease and mortality which 
occurred during the four months succeeding the epidemic. 
If a collection of reports, contemporaneous and similar to the one I 
have submitted, could have been obtained from the several districts and 
towns throughout the kingdom, the date of the rise, progress, and cul- 
mination of the epidemic might have been traced and ascertained in its 
march throughout the country, and most probably some meteorological 
conditions would have been found so general and constant as might 
have led to some fair deductions of the co-efficients of its appearance 
and intensity, or of its utter irrespectiveness to all such physical con- 
ditions ; but in default of such strict elementary documents, we are 
left to speculate about many causes in the earth and atmosphere, as 
productive of the epidemic, according as a theoretical ingenuity from 
limited observation may indulge in, but which may be far from the 
legitimate and satisfactory deductions of medical philosophy. 
