Observations on the prevalence of epidemic fever in Edinburgh and Glasgow : and means suggested for improving the sanitary condition of the poor / by Robert Deuchar.

Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the prevalence of epidemic fever in Edinburgh and Glasgow : and means suggested for improving the sanitary condition of the poor / by Robert Deuchar. 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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    The Report referred to concludes as follows:— Frightful as this picture is, still it is gratifying to find that some- thing has been done, and is still doing in order to check the rava- ges of disease, and alleviate the sufferings and privations of our pau- per population. About three months ago the district surgeons recommended to the Directors of the Town's Hospital the propriety of affording to the most necessitous of their pauper patients imme- diate assistance in the shape of wholesome food, in addition to the ordinary means of relief, to which proposition the Directors at once kindly assented, and placed at their disposal a supply of penny tickets for distribution,—the Directors justly considering that their medical officers were the best qualified, from their personal know- ledge of the circumstances of the poor, to discharge this duty in a discriminating and efficient manner. This promiscuous charity on the part of the surgeons has amount- ed weekly to upwards of L.20, and has been the means of imparting relief to thousands of our fellow-creatures whom want and disease had reduced to the extreme of wretchedness. As a matter of economy, the advantage of this plan will be appa- rent from the fact, that if the Directors of the Town's Hospital had not acted in the liberal manner they did, it is believed that at least a third of the 12,397 cases of fever—viz., 4099 cases—must have been sent to a fever hospital by the district surgeons to keep them from starvation; which, at 15s. per case, (the sum charged for fever cases by the Royal Infirmary), would have amounted to L.3,074, 5s., instead of L.283, 15s. 8d., being the sum actually distributed by the medical officers for the last three months. The public cannot fail to perceive the immense amount of la- bour performed this year by the seventeen district surgeons—a duty, the onerous, disagreeable, and dangerous character of which can only be fully estimated by a personal inspection of those wretched hovels of disease and penury which but too plentifully abound in this city. In these dens, (for they deserve no higher appellation), many of which do not exceed from six to seven feet square, whole families were found by the surgeons, (all affected with fever), con- sisting sometimes of nine individuals, stretched upon the floor, with- out either bed, bedding, fire, or even a morsel of food but that which was daily distributed to them by the Visiting Surgeon. In conse- quence of the above arrangements, on the part of the Directors of the Town's Hospital, however, the state of the diseased poor has been vastly ameliorated. The remarks above quoted seem to afford ample evidence that the medical treatment of fever patients at their ow7i homes how- ever economical at the moment, is a serious evil, and ought instantly