Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 1369

WILLIAM HARTY (1781-1854) Historic sketch of the causes, extent, and mortality of contagious fever, epidemic in Ireland in 1741, and during 1817, 1818, and 1819. Hodges and Smith [1820] xxix 220, 292 pp., [12] tables (part fold.), fold. map (front.). 21.7 cm.

The contagious fever to which Harty refers was typhus, always closely associated with conditions of famine, poverty, poor hygiene, filth, and overcrowding. Harty, physician to the King's Hospital and the prisons of Dublin, noted that Ireland had long been subject to disastrous epidemics of the contagious fever and was especially ravaged in 1741, 1801, and 1817. These years were periods of severe famine in Ireland and Harty estimated that one of every twenty individuals died of the disease during the 1817-1819 epidemic. Harty's purpose in this work was to document the cause, progress, extent, and mortality of the epidemic of 1817-1819.

Cited references: Wellcome III, p. 217