Joseph Rogers, M. D : Reminiscences of a workhouse medical officer / edited with a preface, by Prof. Thorold Rogers.

  • Rogers, Joseph, 1821-1889.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Joseph Rogers, M. D : Reminiscences of a workhouse medical officer / edited with a preface, by Prof. Thorold Rogers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    indifference to the purposes which he avows. I do not think that the reform of those evils with which my brother concerned himself has had much assis- tance from the more wealthy and influential among the physicians. As Arnold said, contemptuously and justly, of Isaac Walton, that '^ he fished through the civil wars, so these good people held, as a rule, severely aloof from the struggle. To the poorer members of the profession, who had to make every effort for a livelihood, and were constrained to give their services for nominal sums in order to get a status in their calling, it seemed more practical to get them better pay and not to give offence. In the end this was part of the result of my brother's labours. He was able to assert, towards the close of his active career, that he had added iB 18,000 a year to the incomes of the Poor Law medical officers in the Metropolis, and to allege that the change, with others, had saved ten times that amount in the Metropolitan rates. I am convinced—having once been a Guardian of the Poor in the city where I live—that the adoption of the policy which he recommended has effected a still gi-eater saving. The first reform which my brother undertook, per- severed in, and speedily saw achieved, was the pro- hibition of intramural interment. He had good reason