The official record of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts : together with a phonographic report of the evidence and arguments at the hearing / by George C. Burpee and W.O. Robson.

  • Tyler, John M.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The official record of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts : together with a phonographic report of the evidence and arguments at the hearing / by George C. Burpee and W.O. Robson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    602/612 (page 592)
    our position. We say that the farther the establishments are from the dwellings, the healthier the locality will be. ** Now, in regard to sickness, they have said that they have known of no sickness in^he establishment. But very curiously, from their own testimony, we have elicited the fact, that the superintendent has been off a portion of two summers on account of sickness; that the head slaughterer has had two attacks of typhoid fever; that the gentleman who took care of the tanks on the 31st of July has often himself become sick, and has applied for another position, which has been given him. Mr. Derhy. He was not strong enough to do that duty. He was not sick. Mr. Mclntire. So, though when we have been requested to show any particular instance where there has been sickness beyond tem- porary nausea and irritation of the throat caused by the smells which emanate from this establishment, we have been unable to do so, yet they themselves, by their own witnesses, have shown us thesfi of the parties in their own establishment who have become sick and have been affected by the vapors. Mr. Muzzey. You claim three cases of illness, in two years, among seven hundred men. IsTothing very alarming in that! Mr. Derhy. And one of those cases not of sickness, but lack of strength. • Mr. Mclntire. That simply proves, not that three alone of your people have been sick, but that we have discovered that three at least have been sick, while you have said that not one had been sick, but, on the contrary, the employees were the healthiest in the community. In regard to the report in the Boston Medical and Surgical Jour- nal on the health of the people living in the localities about this establishment, we do not claim that mortality shown in these statistics is entirely due to this establishment. Of course, the low land, the vile basins, and these establishments combined, go together to make up the extreme mortality which is found in that district. We should not ask to have one alone of these causes abated; we ask to have all these causes abated, for they all have an influence in the extreme amount of sickness in that locality. Now, I pass to what is said by my brother in his argument in rega,rd to the action of different boards of health in regard to this establishment. I disagree with him entirely in what he has given