On the health of London, during the six months terminating September 28, 1850 : read before the Medical Society of London, November 2, 1850 / by John Webster.

Date:
[1850]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the health of London, during the six months terminating September 28, 1850 : read before the Medical Society of London, November 2, 1850 / by John Webster. 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.

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    ON THE HEALTH OF LONDON DURING THE SIX MONTHS TERMINATING SEPTEMBER 28, 1850. By JOHN WEBSTER, M.D., F.R.S.; Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians ; Consulting Physician to St. George and St. James’s Dispensary, etc. [Read before the Medical Society of London, November 2, 1850.] Reprinted from the “ London Journal of Medicine. The approval which has been expressed, in several quarters, of my previous half-yearly Reports on the Health of the Metropolis, published in the London Journal of Medicine, induces me again to resume the subject. In doing so, I gratefully acknowledge the favourable notice which medical writers, and others, have taken of my former papers; and, as the facts then collected, and my commentaries, were considered valuable, I here follow the method formerly adopted. I also believe with practical physicians, that medical science and prac- tice, and sanitary improvements, are greatly promoted by the accumula- tion of evidence, on a large scale, respecting the diseases and mortality of so immense a population as that of London. Deductions drawn from the innumerable data contained in the Registrar-General’s im- portant Reports, have become of very great value to the philanthropist and the physician, from the more accurate knowledge which they impart of the fatality of certain diseases in particular localities, and during different seasons. Few subjects, in my opinion, are more instructive than the investigation of questions connected with public health, of the causes of disease, and especially of the means best adapted for their prevention and cure. It ought to be kept constantly in view, that to point out the existence of an evil, is often not only the first but the greatest step towards its removal or alleviation. I will now proceed to offer some remarks on the State of Health noticed amongst the metropolitan population during the six months, ter- minating on the 28th of September in the present year ; thereby furnish- ing a continuation of the reports which I have already published. And it affords me much satisfaction at once to state, that the late summer and autumn have been unusually healthy, even if compared with ordinary seasons, but particularly so, when contrasted with the year immediately