Towards the latter end of March, 1838, yellow fever broke out among the garrison and the inhabitants in the island of Ascension, and committed great ravages. The disease was preceded by heavy rains for several days: large collections of water formed in consequence, which evaporated under the influence of a burning sun. One of the most extensive of these occurred in a foul and offensive site, surrounded by low dwelling-houses occupied by Portuguese prisoners, the majority of whom were attacked. The men employed in pumping out this water, complained much of its offensive effluvium; they also suffered from the fever, and that most severely. The epidemic extended to the crews of several ships of war which touched at the island, and many of the seamen and officers perished. A.D. 1839. In the month of February, an epidemic pestilence broke out, and proceeded with the rapidity of lightning at Mount St. Bernard. It was characterized by typhoid symptoms, and attended by a lengthened delirium, with occasional short, lucid intervals; out of one family consisting of twenty-one individuals, three only survived: it was confined exclusively to those living on the mountain. Epidemic erysipelas raged with great intensity at Algiers during this period; epidemic disease also prevailed in the district of Coulommiers in France, termed ‘sudor miliaris.’ The premonitory symptoms varied very generally: some of those attacked, when they awoke, found themselves inundated with perspiration; in some, the disease was preceded for some days by prostration of strength, with pains in the joints, &c.: a prominent symptom was a pain and sensation of smothering in the epigastric region; this feeling was greater or less in proportion to the quantity of perspiration, which in some was so profuse that on lifting up the bed-clothes a dense vapour was seen to arise: an eruption appeared after the third or fourth day; ten days after, the epidermis became wrinkled and fell off in the shape of scaly furfuraceous matter. The most fatal cases were those in which agonizing pains were experienced at the epigastrium. The autopsiæ exhibited vesicular eruptions in the intestinal canal. Petechial fever was very prevalent at St. Petersburgh this year (1839); it affected persons in a peculiar manner; during their illness, there was no delirium or appearance of disorder of the intellectual faculties; they spoke and acted sensibly, but after the subsidence of the malady, towards the end of the third or fourth week, they awoke as it were to a consciousness of their condition. Measles also raged epidemically. Yellow fever, this year (1839), was very destructive at Galveston in the republic of Texas.