Two letters to Dr Collins ... / by J.Y. Simpson.

Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Two letters to Dr Collins ... / by J.Y. Simpson. 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.

    52/54 (page 48)
    office has not been more than one half* of several former periods in our Hospital.” The published Register of the Hospital which you lately were so good as send me, shows, that in the seven years of Dr Kennedy’s Mastership, 13,167 women were delivered in the Hospital. Of these women, 224 died, or 1 in every 58. But as this, according to your own account, is not more than one half of the mortality in “ several former periods” of the Dublin Hospital, then it necessarily follows, that in these “ several former periods,” the mortality in the Hospital has been as high, at least, as 1 in 29. Knowing this, surely Dr Hamilton did not deserve to be reviled by you for losing, in a smaller, far less com- modious, and far more crowded hospital, in two years, (1821 and 1822,) patients to the amount of 1 in 30; and that too during one of the most severe puerperal epidemics that has occurred in Scot- land since the commencement of the present century. Altogether, then, I have strong hopes that your own sense of charity and justice, which urged you to address the Patrons of the University of Edinburgh with the preceding argument in favour of Dr Kennedy, will yet enable you to make the amende honora- ble to the memory of Dr Hamilton, and acquit him (on exactly the same grounds as you wished the Patrons of the University to ac- quit Dr Kennedy) from all obstetrical blame or demerit, on ac- count of losing a proportion of Hospital patients from the “ acci- dental” occurrence of puerperal fever. And, my dear Sir, you may rest assured of this fact, that an ingenuous confession and retraction of error, will never detract from your character, nor from the character of any other professional man. J. Y. S. * This word is printed thus in small capitals in your own published Letter. ANDREW JACK PRINTER, NIDDRY STREET.