Report of the Leeds Board of Health, MDCCCXXXIII. Published by order of the Board.

  • Leeds Board of Health.
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Leeds Board of Health, MDCCCXXXIII. Published by order of the Board. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    14/44 (page 8)
    To this end I am warranted in submitting a few facts to the notice of the Board, shewing, I think, demonstratively, that the disease has prevailed, at least in Leeds, most par- ticularly in those parts of it where, from a want of local cleanliness and ventilation, a malignant state of the atmos- phere was likely to obtain. In such situations the epidemic malaria seems to have invested the dwellings of the inhabi- tants ; for I find upon reference to the schedule that in 53 families two persons were attacked in the same house at the same period of time ; in seven families five persons ; in three, four; in one, five; and in one, seven. If these distinct attacks upon members of the same family depended entirely upon contagion, how happens it that we so rarely find cases recorded of two persons being attacked in the same habitation, situated higher, where the miasm does not exist, and where proper attention is paid to cleanliness and ventilation ? Yet we have abundant instances, particularly in the cases of two individuals, both the fathers of large families, and both residing in the higher parts of the town, dying of Cholera, in its most aggravated form, but not communicating the disease to any of the survivors. And again, we have had three or four cases in those parts of the town where nuisances still prevail, since the Board of Health ceased to have reports, but without the appearance of its present diffusion. If the total of the double num- bers (165) beforementioned, be subtracted from the general total 1817, there will remain 1652 isolated cases, where, as in the Workhouse, amidst a population of whom many may not unreasonably be considered as habitually predis- posed to epidemic diseases, yet having the advantages of cleanliness, good diet, and many comforts unknown to out- paupers, although so many persons were attacked, two cases did not occur in the same room. Leeds, situated for the most part in a valley, and in land remarkable for its tenacity, intersected by many small streams, corrupted in their courses by both animal and