that
prevailed may be gleaned from the published tables, which show that
within that calamitous period between the end of 1845 and the conclusion
of the first quarter of 1851, as many as 61,260 persons died in the
hospitals and sanitary institutions, exclusive of those who died in the
Workhouses and auxiliary Workhouses. Taking the recorded deaths from
fever alone, between the beginning of 1846 and the end of 1849, and
assuming the mortality at one in ten, which is the very lowest
calculation, and far below what we believe really did occur, above a
million and a-half, or 1,595,040 persons, being one in 4.11 of the
population in 1851, must have suffered from fever during that period.
But no pen has recorded the numbers of the forlorn and starving who
perished by the wayside or in the ditches, or of the mournful groups,
sometimes of whole families, who lay down and died, one after another,
upon the floor of their miserable cabins, and so remained uncoffined and
unburied, till chance unveiled the appalling scene. No such amount of
suffering and misery has been chronicled in Irish history since the days
of Edward Bruce, and yet, through all, the forbearance of the Irish
peasantry, and the calm submission with which they bore the deadliest
ills that can fall on man, can scarcely be paralleled in the annals of
any people."[275]

An unusual disease on land, scurvy, appeared during the Famine. The
Commissioners of Health attribute its appearance (1) to the want of
variety of food: the potato being gone, they say, the people did not
understand the necessity for variety, and men, such as railway porters,
who had wages enough to buy food, took scurvy for want of this variety,
coffee and white bread being their common dietary. (2) Another cause
was the eating of what was called "potato flour," got from rotten
potatoes; it was not flour at all, and did not contain the elements of
the potato, but consisted wholly of starch as foecula. (3) The use of
raw or badly cooked food also brought on scurvy; and the Commissioners
of Health, therefore, strongly recommended the giving of food in a
cooked form.[276]

Emigration played a very leading part in the terrible drama of the Irish
Famine of 1847; indeed, it was the potato failure of 1822, and the
consequent famine of 1823, which first gave emigration official
importance in this country. A Parliamentary Committee was appointed in
the latter year, before which Mr. Wilmot Horton, the Under