Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/209

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duties on Sundays.[1] We fear that there has been some degeneration, in this particular, since the time of Dr. Chisholm.

In reciting the morbid history of a locality, the first and most prominent topic would naturally be an account of the endemial diseases. But on looking over the catalogue of maladies at our charitable institutions, and taxing our own experience, we cannot fix upon any individual affection, or any classes of affections that can be said to prevail in Bristol more than in other places. This conclusion, indeed, might have been anticipated from the foregoing pages, wherein it appears that our population, though exposed to the morbific agencies common to all populous cities, has no specific causes to contend with. Thus the statements which have been made respecting the geology of the district, will have prepared the reader for the announcement, that the disorders originating in malaria, such as intermittent and remit tent fevers, are known to us only among persons who have immigrated hither from fenny countries.[2] Dysentery, when it occurs, appears either in sporadic cases only, or as the result of an epidemic constitution of the atmosphere. Calculous diseases are not so prevalent as to lead the medical observer to refer them to any local peculiarities of diet. Nor are we aware of any modification of the types of those diseases which are derived from common

  1. Statistical Pathology of Bristol and Clifton.─Ed. Med. and Surg. Journ. vol xiii.
  2. The nearest marshes are in the vicinity of Compton, Henbury, Cross, and Bridgewater.