short of 40,000. The greatest pressure on the hospital took place in the
month of June, from which time the fever gradually declined, till the
month of February, 1848, when the epidemic may be said to have
ceased."[271]

In February, 1847, fourteen applications were made to the Board of
Health, for providing temporary hospital accommodation; in March, they
received fifty-one such applications; in April, fifty-three, in May,
fifty-two; in June, twenty-two; in July, sixty; in August, forty-eight;
in September the number was ten, and in October only eight. The
applications to the Board of Health for temporary fever hospitals in
1847 were 343; the entire number of such applications up to 1850, when
the Board closed its labours, were 576, of which 203 were refused.

Relapse was a remarkable feature of this famine-fever. "Relapses were so
common," writes Dr. Freke from a western county, "as to appear
characteristic of the epidemic; in several cases they have occurred so
frequently as three, or even four times in the same individual." At
Nohaval, Kinsale Union, out of 250 cases 240 relapsed.

The cases received into the permanent and temporary fever hospitals of
Ireland in the year 1845, were 37,604; in 1846 they increased to 40,620;
and in 1847 they rose to the enormous amount of 156,824 cases![272] of
which, according to the Report of the Board of Health, 95,890 were
admitted into temporary hospitals,[273] in which the percentage of
deaths was ten two-fifths; more males dying than females, the percentage
of deaths among males being eleven one-fifth, and among females nine
six-tenths. But the mortality in the fever sheds sometimes rose to
fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, and in a few instances to twenty-eight and
twenty-nine per cent.; the cause being previous dysentery (on which
cholera sometimes supervened) and starvation. In Eyrecourt, Ballinrobe
Union, the death-rate rose to twenty-nine one-third per cent.; in West
Skull to twenty; and in Parsonstown to twenty-nine five-eighths. The
principal complications of this famine-fever, according to the
Commissioners of Health, were dysentery, purpura, diarrhoea, and
small-pox; and they further say of it that it was, perhaps, unparalleled
for duration and severity.[274]

The average weekly cost of each patient in the temporary hospitals,
including the salary of the medical officer, was four shillings and one
halfpenny.

"Some approximation to the amount of the immense mortality