President's address, delivered at the annual meeting of the British Medical Association, held in Birmingham in August 1872 / by Alfred Baker.

  • Baker, Alfred, F.R.C.S.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: President's address, delivered at the annual meeting of the British Medical Association, held in Birmingham in August 1872 / by Alfred Baker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    lO fession, and would be competent to contribute to those discus- sions between the associated officers of health, which have materially advanced our knowledge of scientific hygiene. The cost of such a man would be more than compensated by a diminished rate of illness and pauperism, a more steady capacity for labour and a smaller ratio of crime. All of these points materially affect the financial expenditure of the borough. By the Public Health Bill this defect will be remedied, and the town will be placed beyond the reach of amateur legislation, which has too often resulted in unscientific experiments, with a population as the corpus vile for their trial. A sound, highly educated man should be selected from the members of that profession which has supplied those philoso- phical Privy Council Reports of the sources of disease and death that have guided our imperial Government, have formed a magnificent contribution to sanitary science, and have tended to make popular the broad rules of hygienic knowledge. This course, the only proper one, will rescue our corporate body from the humiliation of seeking, as it has done, the gratuitous gui- dance and opinions of their medical fellow-citizens, whose spe- cial learning has been acquired by devoted labour and tech- nical education, which are estimated in other and ordinary transactions by an equivalent money value. The large surface over which Birmingham is spread, and which has led to its being declared by Mr. Rawlinson the most openly built town in the kingdom, contributes materially to its healthiness. Our streets are of fair width, excepting in the old town, in the main thoroughfares of which efforts to ap- proximate them to our present requirements will be obvious to all. The buildings are low, rarely consisting of more than three or four storeys, and therefore offering little obstruction to the currents of air, with which an elevated table-land is sure to be visited. In some thronged business parts, such as High Street and Bull Street, the increasing value of land and the necessities of trade have led to more aspiring erections, but they have not yet reached the height of the Manchester warehouses, or ob- scured the sky like the buildings in the old part of Edinburgh. The streets are macadamised and cleanly, being kept in good