Observations on the best mode of registering deaths : read at an evening meeting of the Royal College of Physicians, June 1843 / by William Pulteney Alison.

Date:
[1844?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the best mode of registering deaths : read at an evening meeting of the Royal College of Physicians, June 1843 / by William Pulteney Alison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    recommendation of this kind ? If the cases of croup, laryngitis, and quinsy are stated separately, it will be an easy matter to add them together ; but if the three diseases be confounded sys- tematically in all the registers, they can never afterwards be analyzed. According to Dr Alison’s plan, all the physicians and surgeons of the country, whatever might be their skill in diag- nosis, whatever be the progress of medical science, would be bound to assign the cause of death in general terms, instead of the precise terms by which diseases are generally designated.” Now, according to our plan, every physician and surgeon will be at liberty to exercise his skill in diagnosis to the utmost, be- cause he will be asked to give a name to every case which he has seen (although a shorter and simpler nosology than that of Mr Farr will be recommended to him); but it can be no great trouble to him, besides giving the name, or when he is uncertain as to the precise name, to enter the disease in our first column as one of the head, chest, or abdomen ; and by doing so he will enable any future inquirer easily to enter the case in two distinct lists, both equally authentic, the one containing certain particulars only, the other, a shorter list, containing more minute information. It is to be observed, that in all Mr Farr’s lists there are a number of cases recorded merely as disease of the head, disease of the lungs, which is an admission of our principle, that the seats of diseases can be stated in a number of cases where the names cannot be assigned. But these cases, from the deficiency of his plan, are not stated as acute or chronic; and their number is so small in comparison to those where the disease is named, as to show very distinctly, that on the names assigned to many of these cases little reliance can be placed as a scientific record. I think I have shown that the plan of two columns with sub- divisions, although a little more troublesome to the framers of the schedules,—will be in fact less troublesome to the recorders of deaths, than Mr Farr s plan of crowding so many particulars into single columns, while it will give great facilities to future scientific inquirers. There is a suggestion contained in Mr Chadwick’s Report upon the sanitary condition of the labouring classes, which shows very distinctly the importance of having authentic records, not only of the diseases causing deaths, but of the circumstances attending and causing diseases, viz., that in addition or as supe- rior to the medical officers in charge of districts (that is, of unions under the amended English poor-law) there should be a small number of superintendent medical officers charged with all inquiries affecting the public health, and that one of their duties should be the examination of the registers, to ascertain whether any particular diseases prevail at particular times in individual districts or classes of the community in an unusual decree and , so, whether these can be traced to removable causes ’it is obvious how much the labours of such men would be facilitated