Report on the health of Liverpool during the year 1864 / by W.S. Trench.

Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the health of Liverpool during the year 1864 / by W.S. Trench. 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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    TYPHUS. The most fatal of the zymotics was typhus. Under this term our nosology includes every variety of continued fever; but it seems pretty well agreed upon by the medical men of the town, and is consistent with my own observations, that the enteric form was not met with more frequently than usual, and that the prevailing type was a pure typhus, with a distinct mulberry- coloured rash. There will, no doubt, be shades of difference in the opinion of practitioners as to the extent of any ruling disease, according to the locality where, the time when, and the patients among whom, the observations are made. Thus, seven gentlemen of considerable experience as Parochial Medical Officers having been questioned by me on this subject, four stated the predominant fever to be typhus, two included typhoid with typbus, and one mentioned that the majority of cases which he had seen were low typhoid. Infantile remitteut is purposely placed in the same category with typhus, because considered by many physicians as not only similar in its etiology, but also as the one disease with modified symptoms. It may be mentioned, however, as shown in the chart of the annual mortality, that it numbered 34 entries on the registry. Typhus fever began to be in excess in Liverpool during the latter months of 1861, and steadily increased until it assumed, during the last quarter of 1864, the gravity and extent of a destructive epidemic. Taking 1860, a period of average healthiness, as a basis, we find that the annual deaths from this disease rose from 390 consecutively in the three following years to 482, 730, and 1,304, while in 1864 they reached to 1,774. The lists of admissions into the Fever Hospital of the Workhouse record the same history in the progress of the disease. In 1860 the total cases under treatment were 618; the average number in hospital at one time, 22. In 1801 the total cases, 656 ; the average at one time, 29. In 1862 the total cases, 1,220 ; the average at one time, 52. In 1863 the total cases, 2,302 ; the average at one time, 132. In 1864 the total cases, 4,157 ; the average at one time, 209. But a yearly average does not exemplify the extent of the fever among the people during the period of its epidemic virulence, and I therefore subjoin a record of the position of the hospital during the last 14 weeks of 1864 :— Admitted. Discharged. Died. Remaining. 106 39 12 262 134 93 15 288 119 74 17 316 128 83 16 345 179 1^8 25 371 138 137 26 846