This year, a singular malady--a sort of rheumatic fever, occasioning great agony,--broke out in the island of St. Thomas, in the West Indies, and affected almost every one of a population amounting to 12,000 persons. It obtained from the negroes the cognomen of ‘dandy fever.’ It proved to be an exceedingly painful disease, crippling persons for weeks and months, and obliging them to move about on crutches; it was, however, rarely fatal: it spread generally all over the West Indian Islands. A similar disease prevailed the year following, A.D. 1828, in Paris, and was considered by the Parisians as being of an extraordinary character. A writer thus describes the malady:--It was generally unaccompanied with any great degree of fever, but affected the whole nervous system in a most peculiar manner; especially by a most painful sense of formication in the hands and feet, as well as a degree of numbness which seized first upon the members, and thence extended over the whole body. The formication and painful numbness of the extremities were so characteristic of the complaint, that at Paris and elsewhere in France it was known by the name of ‘mal des pieds et des mains.’ The cellular tissue, in this disease, became affected after a while; the hands and feet swelled, and œdema attacked the face and several other parts of the frame: immense numbers suffered from it in France. The sensations were compared to those caused by the punctures from the points of a thousand needles, or of some such sharp instrument; an intense degree of heat aggravated the sufferings, and many could scarcely move their body or extremities without great agony; cramps and spasmodic contractions were present in many cases; the digestive organs were greatly disordered, and symptoms of cholera morbus were sometimes developed in the course of the disease; eruptions of various kinds occurred on the body; sleep was prevented by excessive pain and general disturbance of the system; delirium sometimes supervened; the sight and hearing, and the sense of smell, were altogether lost in some, but in others only partially impaired. In some, convalescence followed in a few weeks; in others, not until several months had elapsed. Great numbers fell victims to the malady, and many perished ultimately from its sequelæ.