Facts which prove the immediate necessity for the enactment of sanitary measures, to remove those causes which at present increase most fearfully the bills of mortality, and seriously affect the health of towns / by John Charles Hall.

Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Facts which prove the immediate necessity for the enactment of sanitary measures, to remove those causes which at present increase most fearfully the bills of mortality, and seriously affect the health of towns / by John Charles Hall. 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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    TIIE CAUSES WHICH INCREASE THE BILLS OF MORTALITY, AND SERIOUSLY AFFECT THE HEALTH OF TOWNS. “ Exempta juvat spinis e pluribus una.” WE live on the eve of great and important changes; the ding of party warfare resounds no longer in the legislative assembly of our country; those great political measures which have so long occupied almost exclusively the attention of our senators are now the law of the land, and the “ rulers of the people” have now time to direct their attention to the social wants and requirements of the community. With all our boasted knowledge the star of civilization is still clouded, and the art of government is in its cradle; and yet the womb of the future is pregnant with much that is good; public attention has been, and is about to be more closely than ever, directed to the sources of fever—to the means by which the filth of our cities and villages may be removed, and the frightful ravages of syphilis controlled. Then, and then only may we hope that the value of life will be increased, and increased it most assuredly must be, by the removal of those heaps of filth— those noisome open drains—the whole paraphernalia of pestilence which is daily exhibited around the dwellings of the poor; and, lastly by the removal of all places of interment beyond the walls of towns. When such sanitary measures as these are enacted by parliament, we may congratulate ourselves on the important fact that at last the great wants of the people are attended to. It is by measures such as these that the Ministry will “stand between the living and the dead and bid the plague to cease.” We have been led to make the above remarks from the unusually large number of cases of Gastric Fever which have come under our own care, or the care of some of our professional friends, during the months of last July, August, September, and October ; and from our own experience we venture to state that the great majority of the cases of fever we have seen, during a somewhat B