On the improvement of medicine. The oration delivered before the Medical Society of London / [Theophilus Thompson].

  • Theophilus Thompson
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the improvement of medicine. The oration delivered before the Medical Society of London / [Theophilus Thompson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tice; for although various causes must be ac- 7 o knowledged to contribute to the result, yet it would be unfair and unphilosophical not to allow, that the medical management of the population must exert a considerable influence on the probability of life, and that the prevailing medical doctrines must, in no slight degree, modify the opinions and habits of the community in reference to the art and philosophy of living. It is true that, till the present time, the bills of mortality have been lamentably deficient, in the accuracy required to guide us in scientific calculations ; but they never¬ theless furnish general results, approximating suf¬ ficiently to the truth to authorise our attaching importance to several conclusions, deducible from them. It appears from these tables (and it is confirmed by the observations of Marshall, Hawkins, and Roberton,) that the average dura¬ tion of human life, in England and Wales, has, during the last half century, increased from forty- two to fifty-eight years ; in Middlesex from twenty-five to forty-five, and in London from twenty to forty-six years. Eighty years since* fifty-one of every hundred deaths in London were of persons under the age of twenty ; at present only forty-two per cent, die under that age ; a less proportion than used to die fifty years since, under the age of ten : while there is reason to believe that a greater
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