A bedside manual of physical diagnosis : ... with an appendix, containing a plan for the registration of cases in hospital and private pratice : also an abstract of Mr. Farr's statistical nosology / by Charles Cowan.

  • Cowan Charles, 1806-1868.
Date:
1842
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A bedside manual of physical diagnosis : ... with an appendix, containing a plan for the registration of cases in hospital and private pratice : also an abstract of Mr. Farr's statistical nosology / by Charles Cowan. 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.

    109/128 (page 85)
    APPENDIX. Suggestions as to a Form of Register for Hospitals, Dispensaries, and Private Practice. [From the Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association.] Having, as Chairman of the Committee appointed in 1837, “ for deciding on the method best adapted for securing valuable statistical information,” submitted to the members of the Association some observations on Hospital Reports, we are again desirous to direct their attention to the same subject, and to propose what we helieve to be an improvement, as well as an extension of the plan then recommended. Perhaps there never was a moment more propitious than the present for appreciating the value of extensive registration. The admirably contrived and conducted system, now in force, for ascertaining the mortality, births, and marriages of Great Britain, and the interest- ing, important, and annually multiplying results which have already been obtained, cannot fail to direct the public mind strongly to the subject, and to excite a craving for a still more extensive application of the method. Medical men are naturally and justly expected to be main agents in the process, and the advantages arising from an accurate acquaintance with the mortality and diseases of particular districts, are of too palpable and practical a nature to allow them to stand excused from the necessary labour. In the army, navy, public works, insurance and benefit societies, &c., manifest advantages would ensue were the system generally adopted ; and in those insti- tutions, as our hospitals and dispensaries, more expressly devoted to the reception and treatment of disease, statis- tical information is peculiarly needed, and ought, with- out doubt, to be provided. It is even a question whe- ther public charities should not be compelled to keep i