NATURAL HISTORY. 
35 
dressers^ asthma to those who labour in the coal 
mines^ and some degree of spinal curvature among 
those who are employed in the coal mines at Pensax^ 
where the strata are so thin as to require the men to 
work with their bodies in a flexed position. The 
china painters in Worcester are very liable to oph- 
thalmia ; and those who labour at the iron foundry to 
affections of the heart. 
Wen in the neck^ or bronchocele^ is very frequent 
throughout Worcestershire^ and has been erroneously 
attributed to the impurity of the water ; that it is 
not at all connected with the water of the district is 
clear^ for it occurs even at Malvern^ where the water 
is singularly pure. With regard to the causes which 
produce wen^ in various parts of the worlds we are 
very much in the dark. All that is known upon the 
subject is^ that it most frequently occurs in humid 
valleys in the vicinity of hills. 
I cannot conclude this short description of the 
diseases of the county^ without placing on record the 
relative mortality from that awful and mysterious 
visitation the cholera^ in the several towns of the 
county. In Worcestershire this disease was almost 
w^holly confined to the people congregated together 
in the towns ; the rural population^ with a few 
exceptions^ escaped its ravages. The only well- 
authenticated instances of death from this disease in 
the villages^ were at Ripple and Bredon's Norton ; 
and the number of deaths in these localities altogether 
amounted to three. On Malvern Hill, also, two 
persons died, but they were vagrants, who did not 
