Proceedings of the Society. xxxui. 



r> citly that for these iwo years, all the diseases of an epidemical 

 ' character which had existed before, did not reappear under 

 » the influence of the medical circumstances which had formerly 

 • caused them. » 



i> Such was the opinion given in November by the Committee 

 of the Medical Society entrusted with the answer to the questions 

 which had been laid before them by your Secretary. 



1 However, towards the latter end of the year -1848 and the 

 beginning of the present year 1849, a disease of a rather serious 

 character,and the seat of which waspositiveiyintheorgansof res- 

 piration, brokesimulianeously onceinseveral parts of Mauritius. 



» JUany adults were seized by it, and several children expe- 

 rienced its pernicious inlluence and were carried off the 

 victims of its fatal eftects. 



It was, as Physicians themselves sjy, an epidemical disease 

 acting upon the organs of respiration with more or less intensity 

 a ccording to the condition of the patient ; it was, in a word, an 

 epidemical disease of the lungs, or the influenza, to call it by its 

 preper name. 



» Now, your Secretary wished to ascertain, in numbers, the 

 degree of intensity of the disease, and established a comparison 

 between the month of January of the two last years and that of 

 Januaiy 1849 ; thut is to say, he made an extract of the deaths 

 for the month of January of the present year, and compared it 

 with that of the deaths for January 1847 and 4848, for the 

 town of Port Louis only ; and he obtained the conviction that, 

 to judge by the rate of mortality observed in the month of 

 January 4849, the sanitary state of the town then was far from 

 being so satisfactory as that of the two preceding years in the 

 same month. 



1 Indeed the deaths for January 4849 surpassed consi- 

 derably those for January 4847 and 4848. 



» In January 4847, at Port Louis, they amounted to 475, in 

 January 1848 t© 453, and in January 4849, to 244. One 



