Sketch of the medical and statistical history of epidemic fevers in Ireland, from 1798, and of pestilential diseases, since 1823 : with an appendix, consisting of a dissertation on the pathology of fever, edit. Dublin, 1826, and a comparative view of cholera morbus -- edit. Dublin, 1832 -- illustrated by cases / by William Stoker.

Stoker, Gulielmus, 1773-1848

Date:: 1835

Credit: Sketch of the medical and statistical history of epidemic fevers in Ireland, from 1798, and of pestilential diseases, since 1823 : with an appendix, consisting of a dissertation on the pathology of fever, edit. Dublin, 1826, and a comparative view of cholera morbus -- edit. Dublin, 1832 -- illustrated by cases / by William Stoker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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None but those who require gratuitous relief obtain assistance from this institution. The sick person sends notice to the hospital, which is served on one of the physicians on extern duty, who visits the applicant, and gives an order for admission if it is not opposed to any mandate of the managing committee. The order for ad- mission must be signed by the visiting physician, at the residence of the patient. But this regulation, though intended originally for the ex- clusion of persons not labouring under infectious fevers, yet from the acknowledged difficulty of distinguishing, at least at the commence- ment of fever, between those produced by contagion and by other exciting causes, has wholly failed in that respect; moreover, it has become a very injurious regulation in many instances, by rejecting those who seek admis < sion at the hospital gate, or lie in the neighbouring streets, who are often ejected from their lodgings for either non-payment or from being thought sources of contagion. Such events I have known to happen every year in the last ten, and many patients to have died neglected and unsheltered, whilst numerous beds in the hospital from which they were turned away were vacant. This abuse should be immediately corrected to prevent further mischief arising from it. Besides, although there is, literally, no limitation in the rules and regulations of the hospital to the admission, of the objects of charity, the sufferer living within the Circular-road (i.e.) in Dublin ; yet these objects of the charity were wholly lost sight of since malignant cholera prevailed, and in a greater or less degree supervened upon almost all contemporaneous diseases. Whatever appeared to the theory or the alarm of the visitor to be asiatic cholera, was of course rejected, in obedience to the mandate of the managing committee, and at a time when the hospital was most needed was it most inoperative. This appears to me a serious abuse, and directly at variance with the principles of the insti- tution. The limitation of admission to patients whose residence is within the Circular-road, also requires to be reconsidered, because it has been fatal to many who were rejected after being removed from the country to seek admission. The Cork-street fever hospital makes no provision for extern patients. If a dispensary and cheap provision store were connected, great advan- tages to the poor might be thus derived, more especially in those outbreaks of epidemics, obviously produced by famine, such as occurred in 1817,18, 19, and 20. During the prevalence of famine and succeeding pestilence in 1817,18,19,1 saw in Peter's parish very great advantages from supplying the sick at their own houses with the necessaries of life, and adminis- tering such remedies as actual disease demanded.* The fever hospital does not receive any case which may not come under the head of Febrile disease; (according to the opinions of the Committee which unfortunately they have not been able to define with any degree of ac- curacy, and as may be seen in the preceding part of this sketch,) if • See my reports for the years 1820, 182], and 1823,

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