An address delivered in the theatre of the Meath Hospital at the opening of the session of 1847-48 / by William Stokes.

  • Stokes, William, 1804-1878.
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An address delivered in the theatre of the Meath Hospital at the opening of the session of 1847-48 / by William Stokes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/32 (page 15)
    with another not in fever, the latter is liable to con¬ tract the disease, is an undeniable fact. We need go no further than to refer to the annals of the medical mortality in Ireland to prove this. Every city, every village, almost every dispensary in the country, has to deplore, not the loss of one, but of a succession of our devoted brethren, who have fallen in the prime of their lives, and in the fulfilment of their duties, victims to this plague ; whose lives were unho¬ noured, whose labours were unrewarded, but whose deaths, with God’s blessing, shall not be forgotten. They have gone to reap a greater reward than their country would give them; but let us hope that that country will atone for its fault, in the adoption, for the future, of a more just and enlightened system. To this subject Mr. Cusack and I drew the atten¬ tion of the Legislature in 1843, and we stated in evi¬ dence before the House of Commons that the morta¬ lity of medical practitioners in Ireland was so great as to demand the earnest consideration of the Government. I may refer you to our printed evidence in the Reports of the House of Commons; and I shall quote from the published statement of our researches in the Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medicine, for August, 1847 : “ From the returns to our inquiries, when statisti¬ cally arranged, we learn that, during the twenty-five years prior to the date of the returns in 1843, 1220 practitioners were in charge of 406 medical institu¬ tions, a number very much less than in reality exists, or had existed during that period ; but the error, if error there be in these as well as the other numbers