Manchester Statistical Society, inaugural address at the opening of session 1863-64 / by A. Aspland.

  • Alfred Aspland
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Manchester Statistical Society, inaugural address at the opening of session 1863-64 / by A. Aspland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    I am not prepared to enter fully upon this theme; but as it will probably be during the next few months a much vexed ques- tion, I hope we shall have it brought before us in a comprehensive form. Dr. Christison has placed himself in the van, “ to meet the Goliah and giant of authority,” and will struggle to show the fallacy of the a non causa pro causa reasoners. My only fear, in reference to him, is that he under estimates the value of the labours of our great sanitary reformers, and that the sanction of a great name will be pleaded in favour of a backward policy. His contempt for marsh draining, as an ague destroyer, and the mode in which he damns with faint applause cleanly houses and ventilated rooms, will meet but little sympathy on this side the Tweed. He is iuconsistent in using the Scotch mortuary tables as bases of argument, after indicating clearly and decisively their untrustworthy character. In the pen w-ar he wiU have to encounter two of the ablest writers and most accomplished savants of the present day. Dr. Farr and Mr. Simon; but I have little doubt that unprejudiced obser- vation will confirm much of his argument. The Bethnal Green enquiry will repay a careful perusal. The press asserted that typhus and scarlet fever were raging, especially in a district appropriately named “ Little Hell.” The district registrar endorsed the statement, by inserting scarlet fever opposite to the names of five dead children from Thorold’s-square. Varying medical terms, such as “ scarlatina augmosa,” “ urtemic poisoning,” after scarlet fever, resulting from the picturesque fancy of the official, implied almost necessarily scientific evidence of the cause of death. The statement of Mr. Gay was conclusive as to the deaths resulting from simple blood poisoning, and the Union medical officer, who had watched the cases from the first, and who ought to have been applied to by the registrar for death certificates, was in perfect agreement with Mr. Gay. This is the old story over again;—“ Abundance of zymotic disease” (whatever that absurd term may mean), according to the reporters of the press, “ indescribable filth, and its natural companions typhus and scarlet fever,” but no satisfactory response from those who alone can judge; they speak
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