chap, in.] POPULATION. 51 



Put out of the question that disease over which no climate 

 has any control, namely, want, and Madeira is very healthy. 

 It is free from most of the distempers which scourge hot 

 countries, and those which are virulent in more northern 

 latitudes only appear there in the mildest forms. Diseases 

 imported from other countries, such as small pox, scarlet 

 fever, measles, &c, have at various times had their run 

 here, hut never remained long. Quarantine regulations 

 are sometimes very strictly, and to visitors somewhat vexa- 

 tiously, carried out *. The cholera has not as yet reached 

 this island. 



POPULATION. 



The population, according to the census of 1835, was 

 115,446. In one made in 1743 the number of persons 

 returned as seven years old and upwards was 48,234, from 

 which it was inferred by Dr. Heberden that the total number 



whose growth premature bodily labour has either stunted or distorted, ex- 

 tending its fatal effects through the whole of their, generally, short existence." 

 * Experience in the Canary Islands seems to justify such caution. Mr. 

 Houghton says, in his letter, " You are aware that during the prevalence of 

 this epidemic in Europe, even when it reached Cadiz, these islands, as well 

 as Madeira, were preserved intact. The usual course of the winds is from 

 that direction ; there has been no change noted in this respect within these 

 last months. The cholera has latterly been making great ravages in the 

 West Indies, a position diametrically opposed to the current of the air. It 

 appears, therefore, almost impossible that we should have received the germ 

 of this destroyer simply through the atmosphere. The credited reports 

 here tend to a contrary opinion. About the 8th or 9th of May a vessel 

 arrived from Havannah with a clean bill of health, and was consequently 

 admitted to pratique without any preliminary fumigation. It is said that 

 the first house in San Jose (a suburb principally inhabited by poor people) 

 in which this disease made its appearance was that of a washerwoman who 

 had taken the mattress and foul clothes of one of the poorer passengers to 

 wash, and that her children slept upon them during the night. Death soon 

 followed ; one neighbour after another was attacked ; the seed had found its 

 appropriate soil, and slowly, but too surely, germinated, and when the air 

 was sufficiently contaminated its fatal effects were generalized." 



D 2 



