Deaths in childbed and our lying-in hospitals : together with a proposal for establishing a model maternity institution for affording clinical instruction and for training nurses / by Aeneas Munro.

  • Munro Aeneas.
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Deaths in childbed and our lying-in hospitals : together with a proposal for establishing a model maternity institution for affording clinical instruction and for training nurses / by Aeneas Munro. 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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    Results in :eparable from the Raison d'etre.—Possibly it may be concluded, after reading the above 'quotation, that the mere fact of a man's living in a town will shorten his life. Surely there must be some limit to an argument like this. It appears to us that too much prominence is here given to the word aggregation, and too little to the conditions associated with aggregation. We affirm aggregation may exist without its usual concomitants which combine to produce an insalubrious condition. Look at Christ's Hospital, with over 700 boys in it, and yet in the midst of the greatest aggregation in the world. We think the state of the boys there will bear comparison with those of Eton or Harrow. We believe fewer epidemics occur in Christ's Hospital, though the proximity is thus far greater than at any other school. There can be no doubt of the fact, as recorded in the article just given, that deaths increase in proportion to the density of the population, but the explanation of that fact is a totally different thing. Life depends upon certain circumstances. Health is sustained under certain salubrious conditions. These being granted in town or country, we do not imagine that the result will be different in given cases in precisely similar circumstances. But whatever encroaches upon these requisite conditions to health will tend to shorten life. Exclude the influence of over- crowding, and mere proximity, as that term is understood in the foregoing, will not explain satisfactorily the results above given in Dr. Robertson's interesting paper. To account for this we must take in town life as compared with country life. The occupations, the habits, &c, as well as the atmospheric influences, are different and unlike. Each has risks which the other has not, as well as advantages. There is truth, no doubt, in the general supposition that country life is more wholesome than town life. Statistics bring this fact out, but statistics cannot explain the reasons why this is the case. We are of opinion that it is not due to aggregation qua aggregation. It is well known that there are diseases peculiar to the country, to the town, to different localities, to the several trades, &c, and these cannot be sepa- rated from the cause of death in balancing a result of this kind. Sir Jas. Simpson, accepting the fact that life is shorter in town than it is in the country, applies this principle to hospitals and private dwellings. A natural inference from this mode of reasoning would be to suppose that a house with twelve individuals in it would not be so healthy as one with half that number, granting proper cubic space, of course, to each individual in both houses. Manifestly this is carrying the matter too far. What we have to consider and define clearly is the