On the registration of causes of death in public institutions and in private practice / by W.T. Gairdner.
- Date:
- [1852]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On the registration of causes of death in public institutions and in private practice / by W.T. Gairdner. 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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![were added other tables, in which particularly important diseases, classes of disease, or operations, were arranged with special refer- ence to the age of those affected, the number admitted at different seasons of the year, &c. There was no distinct or systematic re- gistration of the cause of death in the fatal cases ; and, from the notes added by Dr Reid to the various tables, we may infer that the cause of death not unfrequently differed from the primary dis- ease ; in which case either the primary disease was registered, and the disease causing death was omitted, or (probably in the greater number of cases) the latter was alone registered, and the primary disease was suppressed. To the consequences of this imperfection I shall presently advert. Dr Peacock, who succeeded Dr J. Reid as superintendent and pathologist of the Infirmary, pursued, during the years 1841-2 and 1842-3, nearly the same general plan of registration as his prede- cessor. lie, however, introduced what may be considered as the rudiment of a separate system of registration for causes of death. In the tables for 1842 there is one embodying the diseases presumed to have caused death in 219 cases, in which a post-mortem exami- nation took place. This table, however, appears not to have been considered by Dr Peacock satisfactory, for in the returns of 1843 it does not appear, and in place of it there is a return of all the deaths from 1841-3, arranged on the system of the Registrar-Gene- ral for England. It is not positively stated whence the information as to the cause of death, embodied in this return, is derived; an examination of the return itself shows that it is merely an adapta- tion of the general register.—[Since this paper was read to the Society, Dr Peacock has informed me that the reason which in- duced him to relinquish the special table of the causes of death in cases submitted to post-mortem examination, was “ the impres- sion, that the adoption of a common system of registration (through- out the kingdom), even though that system was not the very best that might be designed, is preferable to using different plans.”] The returns of the Royal Infirmary, from 1843 to 1847, which were compiled under the direction of my immediate predecessor, Dr Bennett, present no important modification of the plan of Dr John Reid. The general register is analysed and classified in a number of tables, and notes are added here and there, explanatory of some unusual complication or cause of death, chiefly where the disease registered appears inadequate to account for the fatal event, or where a cure is registered under some disease not usually con- sidered curable. Dr Bennett has already on former occasions, in this Society, expressed most emphatically his want of faith in such medical statistics as those of the Registrar-General and of the Royal Infirmary ; and therefore, perhaps, I need scarcely say, that in the tables published by him there is no attempt to extend the system of his predecessors by the introduction of additional details, or by a separate and independent register of causes of death.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28043157_0005.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
