Address of Harvey Lindsly, president of the Association : from the minutes of the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association, held in the city of Louisville, May 3, 1859.

  • Lindsly, Harvey, 1804-1889.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address of Harvey Lindsly, president of the Association : from the minutes of the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association, held in the city of Louisville, May 3, 1859. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    and £400,000 on Wellington, the successful victor on a few battle fields. While the benefits derived from controlling the ravages of small- pox are perhaps more striking from its fatal and loathsome cha- racter, than those arising from any other single improvement or discovery in medicine, yet there are many others almost as im- portant, which have contributed greatly to the health, comfort, and happiness of man. Of these, the history of scurvy furnishes one of the most striking examples. In times as recent as Captain Cook's, a confinement of a few months on shipboard invariably led to the prevalence of this dreaded scourge, laying prostrate one-half of the crew, proving fatal to one-fourth, and enfeebling the whole. While now, owing to more accurate knowledge of its pathology, its causes and means of prevention, it is of very rare occurrence, is readily controlled, and is seldom if ever fatal. The improved sanitary condition of the English navy is clearly exhibited in the fact that in 1779, one in eight of those employed died annually, while in 1811, the ratio was reduced to one in thirty-two, and in 1836 to one in seventy-two. In the treatment of insanity and the management of the insane, what a vast improvement has been made within the last few years! Contrast the chains, the dungeons, the confinement, the violence, the beds of straw, or, what was more usual, the bare floor of mud or stone, the deprivation in fine of all the decencies and all the comforts of life; contrast all this with the kindness, the watchful care, the freedom from undue restraint, the skilful medical treat- ment, the palatial residences arising all over the civilized world for this unhappy class, and then estimate, if you can, how much they owe to the medical profession. The importance of ventilation to comfort, health, and life, can hardly be overrated, and to medical science is almost exclusively due whatever improvement has been made in this respect in our public and private edifices. A vast deal, to be sure, yet remains to be clone, but this must rest with architects, builders, and the people themselves, after the evils of breathing impure air have been so often and so thoroughly exposed by the profession. A single illustration on this subject must suffice. In the Dublin Lying-in Hospital, the deaths of new-born infants between the ages of one and fifteen days, amounted, in the course of four years, to 2,944 out of 7,650 births, which were at once reduced to only 279 deaths during the same period, after a new and improved system of ven-