1799 -- -- -- 146 -- -- 1800 -- -- -- 409 -- -- 1801 -- -- -- 875 -- -- 1802 -- -- -- 419 446 -- 1803 -- -- 254 188 86 73 1804 415 82 190 223 95 80 1805 1024 709 200 297 90 69 1806 1264 1276 441 165 86 56 1807 1100 1289 191 166 84 81 1808 1071 1473 232 157 100 96 1809 1051 1176 278 222 109 116 1810 1774 1474 432 410 120 135 1811 1471 1316 646 331 196 153 1812 2265 2006 617 323 146 156 1813 2627 1870 550 252 227 183 1814 2392 2398 845 175 221 236 1815 3780 2451 717 403 394 249 1816 2763 1669 1026 307 659 162 1817 3682 2860 4866 390 2586 1100 1818 7608 17894 10408 2729 4829 1924 In 1812 the first step was taken towards the adoption of the Poor Law, namely the division of the country into Dispensary Districts, which remained the units of charitable relief until 1839, when the old English system of a poor-rate and parochial Unions was applied to Ireland. During that intermediate period much was left to the medical profession, which contained many well-educated and humane men, to the priests and clergy, and to charitable persons among the laity. There was fever in many places where there were no fever hospitals. A physician at Tralee reported that the back lanes of the town, crowded with cabins, were seldom free from typhus. Rogan gives two instances from the Strabane district in the summer and winter of 1815, at a time when the district was remarkably healthy. A beggar boy was given a night’s lodging by a cottier at Artigarvan, three miles from Strabane. Next morning he was too ill to leave; he lay three weeks in typhus, and gave the disease to twenty-seven persons in the eight cabins which formed the hamlet. A few months after, about a mile from Strabane, a mother fell into typhus and was visited many times by her two married daughters and by others of her children at service in the neighbourhood. Nineteen cases were traced to this focus; “but the actual number attacked was probably more than three times this, as the disease, when once introduced into the town, spread so widely among the lower orders as to create general alarm, and led to the establishment of the small fever ward attached to the Dispensary.” It was in April, 1816, that