Fever in Galway

Galway Vindicator and Connacht Advertiser, 23rd October, 1847

We regret to say that although the cold weather has set in, and winter with all its rigours is coming fast upon us, there is not the slightest indication of anything like a decrease in the extent of fever prevalent in Galway. On the contrary, we are assured by medical men that the disease is on the increase, and that the type in which it now displays itself, is of a far more fatal character than that in which it was exhibited during the summer months.

The fatal character of the epidemic is particularly observable in cases where persons of the richer class are attacked. In all the instances which have hitherto occurred where the better order of the community supplied the patients, the number of victims has increased. Neither wealth, nor rank, nor age, nor sex, escaped the ravages of the pestilence. The poor were hitherto sacrificed. The rich are now bearing their own share of the visitation. No one can say who will be the next victim. No man can calculate an hour upon his existence. The man who but yesterday was in the full vigour of life, is cold in his grave to—day. If the harvest of man has been abundant, so too is that of death. It is not the hungry and the naked who are now alone swept away. Those blessed with every comfort of life and in the enjoyment of every luxury wealth can supply, are not permitted to escape. Want, however, amongst the poor originally generated the plague now raging through the country, and though the intensity of the distress which existed a few months ago had been to a certain extent checked by the abundance of the harvest that has just been gathered in, the effects of that distress are still felt in the ravages of the ruthless disease which is spreading such indiscriminate havoc upon all sides and amongst all classes. The extent to which fever prevails in Galway may be judged of from the fact that but two days since 218 applications for admission were made at one of our temporary hospitals, which happened at the moment to have had accommodation for no more than 80 patients who were then lying there. This fact we have learned from the medical officer of the hospital, who had no interest whatever in exaggerating the truth. If we had heard this in the middle of summer, when fever was almost incidental to the season, and when distress was supposed to have been at its height among the poor, we should not have felt much surprise, but we certainly are astounded at the existence of such a state of things at this particular period of the year, and at a time too when the condition of the people was presumed to have become improved. Yet this was the moment when the Government appeared to sleep on their post, and listlessly by while the people were perishing. It is in the midst of such a state of things too that we are sneered at by the flippant and ignorant correspondent of the Daily News, who takes us to task because we had complained that the Society of Friends had resolved upon hoarding up the bounty of the American people until the time arrived when the price of food received an increase, while in the interval hundreds of human lives may be sacrificed, which the immediate distribution of the two cargoes of provisions sent from America might under Heaven be the means of preserving.

When we last alluded to this subject we expressed our determination to interfere no further with the arrangements of the Society of Friends, whom we believe to be actuated by the most laudable, but as we conceive, the most erroneous notions. Nor should we now revert to matter had our attention not been called to the shallow, sneering paragraph that has just made its appearance in the columns of our English contemporary from the pen of some brainless vagabond who earns his bread by misrepresentation and pandering to the anti—Irish feelings of the people at the other side of the channel.

If we happened to belong to the community called Quakers we would say to the correspondent of the Daily News "save us from our friends". For if their conduct in this transaction is marked by either prudence or humanity, all we can say is, from the possession of such virtues we hope we shall ever be free. We should like to know in what the prudence consists. If these were the only two cargoes of food likely to come from America, we admit it would be prudent to husband them. But we venture to say that before these could be consumed another cargo from the same bountiful source would float in our harbour. Where we ask is the humanity in storing up food when the poor want it, and when they are absolutely perishing under the pressure of distress. It is nothing to the purpose that the harvest is abundant, and the price of provisions considerably reduced. That is all very well for those who have money to go into the market. But to the poor who have no money, and no means of earning money, of what consequence is it whether corn is twenty shillings or twenty pounds a ton. In either case it would be equally out of their reach, and from them it is neither prudent nor humane to detain even for an hour the gratuitous distribution of the food which, with all deference to the Society of Friends belongs not to them as their own but to the suffering people for whose especial benefit it was exported from the free shores of America.