In 1843, when the Medical Charities Bill was brought forward, Stokes and Cusack united in the effort to procure for these devoted men an amelioration of the conditions under which they labored. They repaired to London to give evidence on the subject before the House of Commons. Both these friends had had to deplore the loss of many of their dearest and most promising pupils, who, after a short experience of country practice, had fallen victims to fever contracted in the discharge of their duties. They pleaded that in all justice the remuneration for attendance on fever hospitals and dispensaries should be fixed at a liberal scale, and that some provision ought to be made for the widows and children of gentlemen who had lost their lives in the public service. They collected statistics which proved that during a period of twenty-five years the mortality of the medical practitioners of Ireland was twenty-four per cent., while in most instances the cause of death was typhus fever. They {191} showed that, on the authority of Inspector-General Marshall, the comparative mortality of combatant officers in the army was less than half that, amounting to only ten and a quarter per cent. It was little to be wondered at that William Stokes should say, in answer to the chairman's question regarding the existence of any special risk to the medical officer in Ireland: "Such a number of my pupils have been cut off by typhus fever as to make me feel very uneasy when any of them take a dispensary office in Ireland. I look upon it almost as going into battle." Again he observes: "The medical practitioners in Ireland are placed in a position very different from and far more serious than that of their brethren in Great Britain. . . . . The Irish physician is often exposed to contagion in its most concentrated force when himself under the influence of cold, wet, fatigue, and hunger, as he labors among the poor, passing from hovel to hovel in wild and thinly-populated but extensive districts. He has often to ride for many hours in the worst weather, and at night, enduring great fatigue, while himself a prey to mental as well as physical suffering; for if we add to such labor the injurious influence which the knowledge of danger must have on the system of a man feeling that he is struck down by the disease under which he has seen so many sink, and tortured by the thought of leaving a young family unprovided for, we can understand how it happens that the country is so often deprived by death of so many of its best educated and most devoted servants."