Memorial of the life and work of Charles Morehead.

  • Haines, Hermann A.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memorial of the life and work of Charles Morehead. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    The seven tirst reports were issued under his auspices, the first volume containing an interesting preface, in which he set out clearly the scope and aims of the So- ciety. He pointed to the vast field for scientific re- search afforded by the Bombay Presidency, with its opportunities of observing diseases in much variety of circumstances—in Europeans from infancy to middle age, the newly arrived, tiie long resident, the temperate, the intemperate, the habituated to one climate, and to many ; all the variety of native population, with their different pursuits, habits, and modes of life, in regard to food, clothing, and habitation, &c. Much was to be hoped, he thought, from a wide and methodical observation of meteorological phenomena, and of their relation to health, from the investigation of the influence of physical agents on life, such as the diminished capacity of generating animal heat in a warm c''mate or season, from the care- ful observation of small-pox epidemics in India, and from a study of the effects of the treatment of tropical disease by mercury; for it may be mentioned that Dr. Morehead was strongly opposed to the excessive use of mercury, so popular in the profession at that time. At- tention was also drawn to the question of the propriety and of the best mode of rearing European children in India. And, as if these objects were not sufficient for the society's work, Dr. Morehead further urged in this preface, that it had a yet nobler mission, which ought to constitute the highest aim of its ambition, viz. the giving of the permanent benefits of medical science to the people of India, by introducing an efficient system of medical education. The real difficulties in the way of creating a native Medical Profession were clearly seen by Dr. Morehead. It is not pretended, he said, that there is any diffi-
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