A resumé of the history of hygiene : being the introductory lecture to a course on hygiene and public health, delivered at University College, London, May 10th, 1870 / by W.H. Corfield.

  • Corfield, W. H. (William Henry), 1843-1903.
Date:
[1870]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A resumé of the history of hygiene : being the introductory lecture to a course on hygiene and public health, delivered at University College, London, May 10th, 1870 / by W.H. Corfield. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    mittent malarious fevers, of which we now know the conditions of pro- duction, the means of prevention, and the cure; the means of prevention being the clearing of malarious districts and their drainage and tillage, as has been most abundantly proved in Algeria. Are we as afraid of typhoid fever as we were ? and is the mortality of it so great as formerly? Certainly not. Since the able researches of Mr. Simon, contained in the Public Health Reports ; of Dr. Acland, in his Report on Fevers in Agricultural Districts; and of many other observers, we know so much more of the causes and modes of propa- gation of this fever, that we are now able by sanitary measures to diminish considerably the mortality of it. Let us take some figures. In Bristol, before the improvements in the water-supply, etc., the annual mortality from typhoid fever was 10 per 10,000 inhabitants ; since those improvements, it has been only 6.5. At Merthyr Tydfil, a mortality of 21.33 nas been reduced to 8.66 ; at Croydon, 15 to 5.5, etc. Here are tangible facts to which we can point as resulting from improvements in the sanitary condition of our great towns, especially as regards sewerage arrangements and water-supply. Not only so, but since heroic remedies and supposed specifics have been given up in its treatment, and reliance been placed on the more natural methods before enumerated, the mortality among those actually attacked has been diminished considerably. We cannot pass from this subject without noticing the most remark- able prophylactic measure that medical science has ever produced—the great discovery of the power of vaccination as a preventive of small-pox by our immortal countryman, Jenner. The statistics on the subject are too well known to you all here to need any comment from me, so I will content myself with pointing out to you the fact that in countries where the vaccination of infants has been carried out more rigorously than in our own, the number of deaths from small-pox is reduced almost to nothing, showing that where people do not find out themselves what is best for them, a wise government does well to enforce the observation of sanitary regulations. But with regard to that large class of diseases known as constitu- tional, can we do nothing for them? Are we powerless before the ravages of phthisis, of cancer, of scrofula? Must they go on blighting the existence of whole families ; or can we hope, by wise advice, at any rate to modify their effects? Most certainly we can. A man is not necessarily obliged to be consumptive because his father died of phthisis, or scrofulous because there is scrofula in his family : he is only more