In the County Galway
the epidemic of both dysentery and fever appeared at Ahascragh and
Clifden, separate ends of the district, at the end of this year."[269]
As was anticipated, fever rose to a fearful height in 1847. And, say the
Commissioners of Health, "the state of the medical institutions of
Ireland was, unfortunately, such as peculiarly unfitted them to afford
the required medical aid, on the breaking out of the epidemic. The
county infirmaries had not provision for the accommodation of fever
patients. The county fever hospitals were destitute of sufficient funds;
and dispensaries, established for the purpose of affording only ordinary
out-door medical relief, could, of course, afford no efficient
attendance on the numbers of destitute persons, suffering from acute
contagious diseases in their own miserable abodes, often scattered over
districts several miles in extent."
In January, fever complicated with dysentery and small pox became very
rife in Belfast, and accounts from various other places soon showed,
that it had seized upon the whole country. The week ending the 3rd of
April, the total number of inmates in Irish Workhouses was 104,455, of
whom 9,000 were fever patients.
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