Volume 1

An appeal to the public in behalf of a hospital for sick children.

  • Great Ormond Street Hospital
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An appeal to the public in behalf of a hospital for sick children. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/20 page 4
    deaths in childhood is but little less than it was fitly years ago. The London bills of mortality for the last half of the eighteenth century shew that 46.1 per cent, of all deaths were of children under ten, and 32.6 per cent., of children under two years of age ; while the returns of the Registrar- General for the seven years 1838-1844, prove the mortality in this metropolis under ten years of age to amount still to 44.2 per cent.; and under two to 30.1 per cent, of the mortality at all ages. A diminution of only 2 per cent, in the mortality of early life, during a period of fifty years, remarkable not only for the general advancement of science and art, but also for the increase of medical knowledge and the discovery of vaccination, must be looked on by all rather as a summons to greater effort, than as affording ground for self-gratulation at what has already been accomplished. The object of this Appeal is to point out one direction, in which these efforts are most loudly called for, and to urge on the benevolent the importance of endeavouring to supply, in some measure at least, in this City, the extremely deficient amount of medical provision for the diseases of Children. There exists in London only one Dispensary for the special treatment of the diseases of children; and neither in this city nor throughout the whole British Empire is there any hospital exclusively devoted to their reception. At the same time, the number of children received into the general hos¬ pitals is so small, that on an enumeration of the population of those institutions, made in January, 1843, by a Committee of the Statistical Society, they were found to contain only 136 Children under 10 years of age. Of this small number, too, 41 had been admitted in consequence of accidental injury, 69 for the surgical treatment of some local ailment, and oidy 26, or less than 1 per cent., for the cure of any internal disease. It may be added, for the sake of comparison, that
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image