During the ten years from 6 June, 1841, to 30 March, 1851, the deaths from the principal infective or “zymotic” diseases in the workhouses were as follows: Dysentery 50,019 Diarrhoea 20,507 Fevers 34,644 Measles 8,943 Cholera 6,716 Smallpox 5,016 Besides the workhouses, there were during the famine 227 temporary fever hospitals, which received 450,807 persons from the beginning of 1847 to the end of 1850, of whom 47,302 died. According to the Census returns, the deaths from the several causes connected with the famine were as follows in the respective years: Dysentery Year Fever (with Diarrhoea) Starvation 1845 7,249 ------ ----- 1846 17,145 5,492 2,041 1847 57,095 25,757 6,058 1848 45,948 25,694[522] } 1849 39,316 29,446[523] } 9,395 1850 23,545 19,224 ----- According to this table, fever caused more deaths than dysentery. But there are reasons for thinking that the deaths from dysentery, anasarca and other slow effects of famine and bad food really made up more of the extra mortality of the famine-years than the sharp fever itself. In the returns from the workhouses, dysentery is actually credited with about one-half more deaths than fever. It is known that most of the mortality at the beginning of the famine, the winter of 1846-47, was from dysentery and allied chronic forms of sickness. Dysentery also followed the decline of the relapsing-fever epidemic of 1847-48. Dillon, of Castlebar, says that many, who had gone through the fever in the autumn of 1847, fell into dysentery in 1848, during which year it was very prevalent. Mayne says that dysentery often attacked those recovering from fever, and proved fatal to them[524]. In the General Hospital of Belfast the fatality of fever-cases was 1 in 8, “but this included dysentery.” Probably the same explanation should be given of the high rates of fatality in the Fever Hospital of Ennis, the chief centre of relief for the greatly distressed county of Clare: 1846, 1 in 12½; 1847, 1 in 5¾; 1848, 1 in 5½. It will be noticed that some thousands of deaths were put down to starvation in the Census returns. Perhaps a more technical nosological term might have been found for a good many of these, such as anasarca or general dropsy. But even if physicians had made the returns, instead of the priests or relatives, they would have put many into a nondescript class, for which starvation was a sufficiently correct generic name. Scurvy was another disease of malnutrition which was far from rare during the famine; the deaths actually set down to that cause were some hundreds over the whole period.