Lectures on the principles and practice of physic : delivered at King's College, London / by Thomas Watson.
- Sir Thomas Watson, 1st Baronet
- Date:
- 1848
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Lectures on the principles and practice of physic : delivered at King's College, London / by Thomas Watson. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library at Emory University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library, Emory University.
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![the deaths amounted to 1333 : or, to state the question more simply, the proportion of deaths from scrofula to 1,000,000 living was. in the town districts, 50 per annum, and in the country- districts. 97. And if, with scrofula, tahes mesenterica be included, the numbers would stand as 12-2 deaths in towns to 100 deaths in the country. Again, let us observe the south-eastern, ttie south midland, and the south-western districts ; there the mortality from scrofula amounted to 1 in 12,000, whilst in the densely-packed factory districts of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Cheshire, the mortality from scrofula will be seen to be less than half the preceding mor- tality from the same cause, namely, about 1 in 25,000. And suppose we go one step further, and compare one portion of the metropolis with another, we find that the total deaths from scrofula in the metropolis, when compared with the population, are as 5-6 to 100,000 living, whilst in the most densely populated districts, comprising the East and West London Union, the Strand, Holborn, or St. Giles, Whitechapel, and Bethnal Green, the proportion is as 5-1 to 100,000; Bethnal Green being represented by 4-8, and Whitechapel by 4-7 to 100,000 living. So in the low, dense, and poor districts of Bethnal Green, Poplar, Stepney, Whitechapel, Shoreditch, Westminster, Bermondsey, Rotherhithe, and Lambeth, with a total mortality amounting to 21,522, the deaths from scrofula are 45, or 1 in 478; while in the district em- bracing Kensington, St. George's, Hanover Square, and St. Marylebone, with a total mortality amounting to 14,734, the deaths from scrofula are 30, or 1 in 490. Thus the difference in these districts is scarcely appreciable ; but if we compare the western districts of the me- tropolis with those of Bethnal Green, Shoreditch, and Whitechapel, we find that the propor- tion of deaths from scrofula to the general mortality in the former is as 1 to 490, and in the latter to as 1 to 1000. Again, if from considering the influence of localities, we turn to the comparative mortality of the sexes, it will be found that 20 per cent, more boys die of scro- fula than girls; and yet it must be admitted that girls are more exposed than boys to the effects, whatever they may be, of crowded rooms, and exclusion from out-door employ- ments.—C] I have entered the more fully into the consideration of certain states of the atmos- phere, its extremes and its variations of temperature, and its impurity, as causes of disease, because there is no part of the course in which I could more conveniently introduce them. Most of the other causes of disease, enumerated in my last lec- ture, will be discussed in connection with the disorders to which they give birth: malaria, for example, when I speak of ague ; contagions, when we come to the exanthemata and to continued fever; epidemic influences, with epidemic distem- pers ; improper or insufficient diet, and intemperance generally, with indigestion, and the disorders of the alimentary canal; and so on. There is, however, one re- markable predisposing cause of disease, a few observations upon which may serve to fill up the little that remains of the present hour. I mean, that disposition to cer- tain diseases which is apt to descend from parents to children : hereditary tendencies to disease. We must distinguish between susceptibility of disease, and a tendency to disease. In one sense all persons are born with a predisposition to most forms of disorder. No one is protected by nature against inflammation when the causes of inflammation come into play. Poisons of various kinds, and specific contagions, which indeed are poi>ons, operate with tolerable uniformity upon all men alike. But there are certain complaints which we may separate in this respect from the others: which complaints some persons have a tendency to, and some have not. The tendency is sometimes strong and evident, sometimes feeble and faintly marked ; sometimes it displays itself in the midst of circumstances the most favourable to health, sometimes it requires for its development conditions the most adverse and trying. To mention some of these diseases: scrofula, which I soon shall describe more particularly, gout, mania, and (I believe \ may add) spasmodic asthma. Not only is a disposition to these complaints strikingly pronounced in some per- sons, but other persons appear wholly free from such a tendency—nay, even devoid of the susceptibility of them. Gout, in those capable of it, may be acquired by habits, as it may be repressed and prevented by the opposite habits. The habits that, in certain persons, bring it on, are the intemperate use of the luxuries of the table, and an indolent or sedentary manner of life : but there are many people in whom no amount of rich living or idleness will generate gout. So there are some in whom no exposure to impure air, cold, and wet, and no privations — in other words, no appliance of the influences calculated to bring the strumous diathesis into play—will ever produce anv form of scrofula ; will ever render them consumptive, g2](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21037048_0082.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
