“Apart altogether from the waste of human life, and the indescribable suffering and sorrow which annually fall upon the working classes of Dundee from this periodical scourge, and viewed only as a mere matter of profit and loss to the mercantile and monied interest of Dundee, it were easy to demonstrate, that the expenditure of several thousand pounds per annum, in providing the means of cleanliness to this town, in the better cleansing of its streets, but, above all, of its back closes, courts, and lanes, and the clearing away of those pestilential masses of building which lie concealed from view behind the front lines of some of our principal streets, would have been rewarded by a saving to the community of a vast sum, which the ravages of disease and death have been, for the last few years, compelling Dundee to pay in a way its inhabitants think not of. That this may appear, I have brought into one table the number of cases of fever during the last seven years. “CASES of Fever in Dundee during the last seven years, from 1833 to 1839, inclusive, calculated from the Bills of Mortality according to the proportion of nine cases to each death:— Year. Cases. Deaths. 1833 1,188 132 1834 1,521 169 1835 1,179 131 1836 2,673 297 1837 1,881 209 1838 1,773 197 1839 1,593 177 —————— ————— 11,808 1,312 —————— ————— “Thus, in seven years, fever has fallen on much more than a tithe of the inhabitants,—choosing its victims here, as elsewhere, in the manhood of life, and compelling the citizens of Dundee to pay a tax frightful in the amount of personal sufferings and family bereavements.