426 
DR. YELLOLY ON THE TENDENCY 
prevailing so much among the children of crowded cities, and from scrophulous 
affections being very common in Norfolk. Still, however, the same difficulty 
presents itself, as occurs with regard to affections of the digestive organs ; 
namely, why so minute a portion of scrophulous persons should be affected 
with this disease, and so large a number escape. I am disposed, indeed, to 
consider the idea of a probable connection between a scrophulous and calcu- 
lous diathesis, as very much weakened by the consideration, that in many of 
those parts of Ireland, where calculous complaints are hardly at all known, 
scrophulous affections are stated to me to be exceedingly common. 
I must still confess the difficulty of referring the disposition to calculous 
affections, to any known circumstances of air, water, soil, or habits of life. The 
eastern position of Norfolk and Suffolk, produces more than the average 
bleakness of other parts of the kingdom, particularly in the spring months ; 
but this inclemency is exceeded, both in the northern parts of the island, and 
the more elevated parts of Ireland. The poorer part of the population have 
much of a farinaceous aliment, often not well fermented : but still the main 
article of food is fine wheaten bread, which has been, for a long period, in such 
common use over the whole of England. In Scotland, too, the latter is, as I 
am informed, fast superseding the bread made of the coarser grains. 
In Ireland, the diet of the humbler classes of society is very much confined 
to potatoes, and butter-milk, or skim-milk ; often, unfortunately however, 
without either of the latter ; and it appears highly probable that this diet, and 
perhaps, to a certain extent, the use of ardent spirits, is unfavourable to the 
formation or deposition of lithic acid, with which the tendency to calculous 
diseases is much connected. The freedom from this formidable class of com- 
plaints seems, however, to be dearly purchased, by the want of many of the 
comforts which the labourers of England and Scotland possess ; nor is it 
accompanied by a less than usual tendency to many of the most ordinary com- 
plaints of Great Britain, as pulmonary consumption and scrophula, which are 
mentioned by several of my intelligent correspondents, as being very frequent 
among the Irish commonalty. The effect of a town residence, in producing a 
tendency to calculous complaints, is very strongly exemplified in Dublin, where 
they arc so much more prevalent than in other parts of Ireland. This circum- 
stance will, I venture to hope, meet with the particular attention of the Dublin 
