The correspondence relating to the Lancet Sanitary Commission : (which appeared lately in The Times) / examined by James Caesar Durnford, John A. Power and Raymond S. Daniell ; with an appendix of documents.

  • Durnford, James Caesar.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The correspondence relating to the Lancet Sanitary Commission : (which appeared lately in The Times) / examined by James Caesar Durnford, John A. Power and Raymond S. Daniell ; with an appendix of documents. 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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    fietl, has thus become a public benefactor of no common order ... We only trust such services as Dr. Hassall has rendered in this matter will not be soon forgotten. It is through researches like his that what would be otherwise mere suspicion, even if it were not treated as fable, becomes pi*oducible as fact, and that truth is at length put before our eyes so palpably as to forbid either indifference or doubt.” This acknowledgment of the services rendered by Dr. Hassall in the matter was not permitted to go unchallenged. A rather petulant and not very grammatical letter appeared anonymously in the Times a day or two after, in which the writer, while he acknowledges Dr. Hassall’s title <cto much praise for the manner in which he has performed his part in exposing the frauds practised in food and drink, claims for others who have been employed with him in the same work an equal share of public esteem”—those others being, according to the anonymous writer, “ Mr. Wakley, who originated the idea of a sanatory commis- sion, who planned the arrangements necessary to put it into operation, who paid all the expenses of the inquiry, who was at the cost of publishing the results in the Lancet, and who also bore the risk which was attendant thereon; a poor artist of the name of Miller, who made the microscopic examina- tions and drawings; Dr. Letheby of the London Hospital, who conducted all the important chemical analyses; and Mr. Post- gate, of Birmingham, who was really the agent of public agita- tion whereby this inquiry of Mr. Scholefield’s has been insti- tuted.” To this remonstrance Dr. Hassall, as was to be expected, was not backward in replying; accordingly, on the same day that it appeared, he addressed a letter to the Times, in which he points out and rectifies sundry inaccuracies on the part of his anonymous assailant, and concludes by the very natural inquiry, “ May I ask, having assigned the chemical investigations to Dr. Letheby, and the microscopical ex- aminations and drawings to Mr. Miller, what part either of the work or of the merit your correspondent reserves for me to justify the eulogium which, at the same time, he is pleased to confer on me ? ” This is a question which it is highly fitting should have an answer; it is one, moreover, in which not only