On a standard of public health for England / by E. Headlam Greenhow.

  • Greenhow, Edward Headlam, 1814-1888.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On a standard of public health for England / by E. Headlam Greenhow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    From the Journal op the Statistical Society op London, June, 1859. ^ On ^ Standard of Public Health for England./ By E. Headlam Greenhow, M.D., Lecturer on PuUic Health at St. Thomas's Hospital, ^c., Sfc. [Read before the Statistical Society, 15tb March, 1859.] CONTENTS: PAGE I. Introduction 253 II. Groups of Selected Districts.... 255 III. Course of Investigation pui'sued 259 PAGE IV. Statement of Results 261 V. Conclusion 266 VI. Appendix of Tables 268 I.—Introduction. As a teaeber of Sanitary Science, I have found it desirable to have a Standard of Eeference, showing what may be termed the normal mortality produced by particular diseases in healthy places. I say the normal mortality produced by particular diseases, because, while there are certain diseases, the products of local impurity, which perhaps ought not to exist in a well ordered community, there are other diseases which, although partially preventable, would pro- bably cause a definite amount of premature death even under the most favourable circumstances; of death, that is to say, arising from other causes than natural decay. In the earlier Eeports of the Eegistrar-General—reports which, at the period of their publication, exercised a very powerful influence on the formation of enlightened opinions on sanitary questions—Dr. Earr has contrasted the varying proportions of death from particular diseases in several urban districts and in the rural portions of several counties. I refer especially to the first three annual reports, in which tables of the mortality produced by several diseases in the Metropolis, in groups of densely-peopled Towns, and in several of the principal provincial Cities, are compared with similar tables showing the mortality caused by the same diseases in extensive Rural districts, each consisting of several counties from which the more populous towns have been excluded. But the groups of Towns employed by Dr. Earr did not consist of adjacent towns, but of towns selected from different parts of the kingdom, and the counties, the Eural districts of which were used for the comparison, were also in some instances remote from one another. Of course, therefore, both the Urban and Eural groups comprised places of very different cliaracter, both as regards climate and the even more variable circumstances of habit, residence, and occupation peculiar to different populations. Such was, however, the only practicable method of dealing with tho subject at a time when the