Report from the select committee on contagious fever in London.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Select Committee on Contagious Fever in London.
Date:
1818
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report from the select committee on contagious fever in London. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    20/56 (page 18)
    T, Bateman, then, which is actively engaged in the performance of this important public service, under the present circumstances, cannot be too highly estimated. It is difficult in- ^ deed to apportion its due credit to any system of preventive measures, since neither (i6th Report of extent tior the severity of the evil anticipated, can be so well known as if it had the cufe*andre.'^ b^^ suffered: but when it is considered, that within the last twelve months nearly veutiorofcJnta- eight hundred persons, affected with contagious fever, have been separated from gious Fever in the those who were in danger of being infected by them, more than thirty of whom were Metropolis.) servants from respectable families,—that all their apparel has been purified,—all their apartments fumigated,—and upwards of one hundred and fifty of the latter lime- washed,—and that most of the large workhouses have been repeatedly enabled to clear their wards of infection, as it successively appeared in them,—it cannot be doubted that a very important check has been given to the progress of this public calamity; and that the sufferings which it would have inflicted, have been in no small degree prevented by the continued active exertions of this institution. It surely cannot therefore be necessary to press upon the attention of the public, the urgent claims of an institution thus actively and efficiently occupied in staying the progress, and in mitigating the severity of a pressing evil which may reach the bosom of every family; which indeed has already not been limited to the habitations of poverty, and which is continuing its course with little remission, even during a season usually unfavour- able to the progress of fever, and is therefore likely to be again aggravated by the return of autumn. [The folloiving paper was delivered in, and read.'} Copy of a Letter from the Committee for preventing Infectious Fevers in the Metropolis, to the Secretary of the Treasury, on the subject of the erection of an House of Recovery in Cold Bath Fields. Sir, Cavendish Square, March 9, 1812. We have to ackowledge the receipt of your letter, accompanied by a copy of Mr. Beckett's, and of the resolution of the magistrates of the Middlesex general sessions. In order to give a satisfactory answer, it will be necessary for us to enter into some detail on the subject. The misery and mortality attendant on fever have been long severely felt in this metropolis, as well as in Dublin, Manchester, and other populous towns. The deaths from this cause alone (as appears by the Bills of Mortality) have amounted, in London and Westminster, to an average of 3,188 persons every year, during the preceding century ; and this has been attended not only with great suffering to those who have thus perished, and with broken health and enfeebled constitutions to many of those who have survived, but it has been the means of preserving febrile infection constantly, in certain neglected parts of the metropolis. In 1783 the evil was noticed in Chester; and fever wards were established in the •infirmary there, by Dr. Haygarth : these were followed by regulations to prevent the spreading of fever, adopted at Bury and Ashton-under-Line ; and in 1796, by the establishment of an House of Recovery at Manchester; the effects of which, so striking and so beneficial to that populous town, are detailed in the second, third, fourth, and fifth volumes of the Reports of our Society for bettering the condition of the Poor. The subject had very early attracted the attention of the society, and in the year 1800 a subscription was opened and a Fever Institution established in the metropolis. A small house was engaged in Constitution Row, Gray's-Inn Lane, and as it im- mediately adjoined upon inhabited houses in the same row. Sir Walter Farquhar and seven other eminent physicians of the metropolis, were referred to on the subject. Their unanimous opinion (a copy of which we enclose), was given to our society, that there was no reasonable ground of apprehension on the part of the neighbouring in- habitants. The House of Recovery has since continued there f6r ten years, not only without any inconvenience, but with a removal of those unfounded apprehensions which induced the neighbours, at first, to make two ineffectual applications to the sessions for its removal as a nuisance. The beneficial effects of the House of Recovery in Gray's-Inn Lane have surpass- , ed all expectation ; the early removal of fever patients from their own habitations, and the consequent prevention of infection ; the improved method of treating typhus fever; and the cleansing, purifying, and whitewashing the habitations of the poor, in those parts of the metropolis where infection peculiarly prevailed, have nearly annihilated this disease in London and Westminster, and do, at present, 332. afford