An inquiry into the alleged tendency of the separation of convicts, one from the other, to produce disease and derangement / by a citizen of Pennsylvania.

  • Packard, Frederick A. (Frederick Adolphus), 1794-1867.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inquiry into the alleged tendency of the separation of convicts, one from the other, to produce disease and derangement / by a citizen of Pennsylvania. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    eases of the lungs, which are reported to have proved fatal in the course of the last year. In more or less of the cases the cause of the disease may have been operating before confinement. Here again we see the palpable injustice of attempting to draw an opinion from professional gentlemen upon partial and decep- tive statements. Had the report been placed before the wit- ness he would have been relieved from doubt, for he would have seen that seven-seventeenths or nearly half of all the fatal cases were diseased when received, thus making sure a point which, for want of the report, or a fair statement of its contents, he was compelled to leave to conjecture. Of this (the state of health before confinement) it is neces- sary to know something before an opinion can be hazarded, (except by Dr. Rockwell,) of the healthiness or unhealthiness of the place of their last residence. This sensible principle, faithfully applied to the health sta- tistics of the leading penitentiaries in our country, would revo- lutionize public opinion as to the comparative sanitary effects of separation and association. To illustrate the indispensableness of such previous information, and to show at the same time the extreme folly of relying on a single fact, or class of facts, for general deductions, Dr. Woodward adds: ° «In the course of the winter we have had one death from mortification of frozen feet. We had one last year; and another man has lost a part of all his toes from the same cause. If these facts were stated without qualification or explanation, the inference would every where be made, that we were cruelly negligent as to warmth in our hospital; but, in truth, all these people came into the hospital in this condition; one lived two days only, one lingered two weeks before death, and the third, (and I might add a fourth,) recovered, which will give a very different view of the case. So say we of the Eastern State Penitentiary. If it should be barely stated, that of seventeen deaths among three hundred and eighty-seven convicts, ten were from lung-disease, it might be inferred that there was something in the discipline or adminis- tration which was unfavourable to life generally, and especially conducive to that particular form of disease ; but when it comes