Sanitary economics: or, our medical charities, as they are, and as they ought to be / [Alexander Patrick Stewart].

  • Stewart, Alexander P. (Alexander Patrick), 1813-1883
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sanitary economics: or, our medical charities, as they are, and as they ought to be / [Alexander Patrick Stewart]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    them should require it.* The reader naturally wishes to know what reception the Committee is said to have given to this tempting bargain; but let him first bestow a few moments’ thought on the important question it opens up. I confess that early associations, certain primitive ideas instilled into my mind from very childhood, and the customs of those among whom I was reared, all combined to impress me with very old-fashioned views of the sacredness of the relation between master and servant. It was my delight to hear of servants growing up almost from childhood in the bosom of families of which they reckoned them¬ selves, and were reckoned, members, and in which they remained till their heads were “ silvered over with the frost of age.” And if the great destroyer suddenly broke up, or by slow decay extinguished, the households of which they were component parts, it was pleasant to see them taken into the employ of other members of the same family, and cared for, when bowed down with the weight of years, by those around whom their life-long associations were entwined. Now I do not assert that either the feeling or the practice to which I allude is wholly extinct—for I know that in many quarters they both exist, and are in full operation. But no one, I apprehend, will deny that they are yearly becoming more and more rare, and that in very many quarters the relation between * Another rumour affirms that this privilege was claimed in virtue of a life-subscription of ten guineas. I adopt the more charitable version.