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in places presenting a combination of circumstances most 

 favourable to tbe exclusion of malarious influence, and con- 

 cludes by saying, that the most improved and thoroughly- 

 drained towns and country districts are quite as liable to 

 epidemics of typhus as are the most neglected and marshy 

 parts of our island. 



Professor Alison says, " The vitiation of the atmosphere 

 by putrescent animal or vegetable substances, or by crowded 

 human beings, has been supposed to be a sufficient cause (of 

 continued fever), and the former of these opinions has been 

 much espoused in England ; but so many instances have 

 been collected by Dr. Bancroft, Dr. Chisholm, Parent Du 

 Chatelet, and others, of both these causes being fully applied 

 without any such effect ; and it is so easy to explain the 

 frequency and rapid diffusion of continued fever in the 

 situations where such effluvia exist, by the concentration 

 of the contagious poison and other circumstances and 

 mode of life of the inhabitants, that we must set aside 

 both hypotheses." 



Dr. Duncan, of Liverpool, and Dr. Watts and Dr. Perry, 

 who have written upon the fever of Glasgow, assert that the 

 cause is to be sought for rather in the want of nutritious food 

 than of pure air. 



Other evidence from the Yorkshire districts might be 

 advanced, showing that malaria has little or nothing to do 

 with either the generation or spread of typhus. Wadsley 

 village, built upon bare rock, and one of the best building 

 stones in Yorkshire, consisting of detached well-built stone 

 houses, with high elevation and gentle declivity, is scarcely 

 ever free from typhus fever. The same may very nearly 

 be said of Monk Bretton ; and Little Smeaton, upon the 

 magnesian limestone, and situated upon the bare rock, 

 with a rapid declivity, has frequently in it some very severe 

 cases ; while Womersley, a low damp malarious village, has 



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