Health of St. George, Hanover Square : a letter to a vestryman of St. George's, Hanover Square / by one of the Medical Officers of Health.

  • Robert Druitt
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health of St. George, Hanover Square : a letter to a vestryman of St. George's, Hanover Square / by one of the Medical Officers of Health. 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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    As one branch of our duty, then, we are bound to make ourselves acquainted as far as possible, with the degree and kind of sickness which prevails in our respective districts. In order to acquire this information, we have recourse to the weekly Registers of Deaths, copies of which are now sent to us regularly, and gratuitously by the Registrar General* Last year we procured them from the District Registrars, and paid for them, rather dearly, out of our own pockets. From these Registers we know the place, date, and alleged cause of every death, and the age, sex, and condition of every deceased person ; and thus we are able to construct monthly, quarterly, and annual tables, shewing the loss of life in every part of the parish from every cause. The possession of these Registers is most essential, in order to direct our attention to the points at which disease is most prevalent. Cases too are constantly registered, which make it our duty to make personal enquiry as to the real cause of the disease, the salubrity of the premises, the circumstance whether the deceased person was a parishioner or a stranger, and so forth; for I need scarcely say, that if it is our duty to ascertain the existence of diseases which increase the rate of mortality, we are bound, first of all, to learn what the rate of mortality is without such increase ; and this, as I shall shew presently, can only be learned by a somewhat minute analysis of the Registers. In the next place, we derive our information of the existence of sickness, from the books of the Parochial Surgeons, and of the Charitable Institutions ; by means of which, we now learn exactly the amount of sickness and the kind of it, whether fatal or not, that prevails amongst the humbler classes in every part of the parish. Now you will ask, what use is made of this information ? I reply, more statistical tables, of sickness, as well as of
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