Sims left Tyrone to practise as a physician in London, and with his departure what seems to have been the only contemporary record of epidemics in Ireland ceased. The last quarter of the 18th century in Ireland had probably as much epidemic fever as in England; but it is not until the years 1797-1801 that we again hear of fever and dysentery, on the testimony of the records of the Army Medical Board, of the Dublin House of Industry, and of the Waterford Fever Hospital. At the end of the year 1796 the health of the regiments in Ireland was everywhere good; but in December of that year, and in January 1797, the poor in the towns began to suffer more than usual from fever, and in the course of the year 1797 fever appeared in several cantonments of troops--at Armagh as early as February or March, at Limerick, at Waterford and in Dublin[457]. The summer and autumn were unusually wet, so that the peasantry of the southern and western counties were unable to lay in their usual supply of turf for fuel. In the course of the winter 1797-98 a considerable increase of fever and dysentery was remarked among them, and these two maladies appeared in various regiments in the early months of 1798. This was the year of the rebellion in the south-east of Ireland, pending the efforts for the union with England. The British troops were much engaged with the insurgents throughout the summer, and got rid in great part of the maladies of their quarters while they were campaigning. But in the end of the year fever began to spread, both among the inhabitants and among the troops. It was nothing new for English and Scots regiments to suffer from fever or dysentery during the greater part of their first year in Ireland; but the epidemics in the end of 1798 were more than ordinary. The Buckinghamshire Militia quartered in the Palatine Square of the Royal barracks, Dublin, lost by “malignant contagious fever” 13 men in October, 13 in November, and 15 in December. From November to January, the Warwick regiment suffered greatly in the same barrack. The Herefordshire regiment, 833 strong, lost 47 men at Fermoy, mostly from fever contracted in bad barracks; the Coldstream Guards at Limerick, the 92nd regiment at Athlone, and the Northamptonshire Fencibles at Carrick-on-Shannon, also lost men by fever. In July, 1799, not a single regiment in Ireland was sickly; but a wet and very cold autumn made a bad harvest, aggravating the distresses of the poor and causing much sickness, which the troops shared. The county of Wexford, the principal scene of the rebellion, suffered most, and next to it the adjacent county of Waterford. The fever-hospital of the latter town, the earliest in Ireland[458], was projected in 1799; the statement made in the report of a plan for the new charity, that fifteen hundred dependent persons suffered from contagious fever every year there, showed that the need for it was nothing new, although hardly a tenth part of the