1827 2781 137 20 2800 80 35 5581 1828 854 37 23 960 22 39 1714 1829 506 23 22 640 18 35 1146 1830 806 34 23½ 910 25 36 1716 1831 1015 65 15½ 920 31 29 1935 ----------------------------------------------------- Totals 5962 296 20 6130 176 34 12092 From 1831 to 1836 the admissions to hospitals were as follows: Year Admitted Died 1832 1028 57 1833 824 42 1834 906 55 1835 1484 121 1836 3227 235 The last lines show the epidemic increase, which began in the autumn of 1835. It will appear from the following (by Geary) that it was largely an epidemic of young people, and that the fatality was by far the greatest among the comparatively small number of persons attacked at the higher ages--a well-known law of typhus of which this Limerick demonstration was perhaps the first numerically precise: _Table of the Numbers admitted to Limerick Fever Hospital at stated ages of five years, with the deaths, from 6 Jan. 1836 to 6 Jan. 1837._ Average Ages in mortality Years Admitted Died per cent. 1-5 81 2 2¼ 5-10 489 13 2½ 10-15 762 18 2¼ 15-20 701 37 5¼ 20-25 362 22 6 25-30 304 27 8¾ 30-35 100 12 12 35-40 203 45 23¼ 40-45 70 13 18½ 45-50 82 22 27 50-55 23 5 21½ 55-60 36 12 33¼ 60-65 2 1 50 65-70 10 5 50 Over 70 2 1 50 ------------------------------ Total 3227 235 7¼ One-sixth of these Limerick hospital cases, to the number of 567, came from the county, chiefly from the damp, boggy districts five to sixteen miles from the city. The whole admissions were rather more than the same hospital received in the famine year, 1817. But, although 1836 was not a year of special scarcity, there must have been some cause at work to raise the perennial typhus to the height of an epidemic, not only in Limerick, but in Dublin, Cork, Waterford, Ennis, Belfast, and other towns. In the country, an epidemic outburst during the months of March, April and May, 1836, in the parish of Donoughmore, Donegal, is perhaps only a sample of others unrecorded: it was remarkable in that nine-tenths of the cases of fever had as a sequel large boils on various parts of the body, but principally on the limbs[492].