On infantile mortality, and the establishment of hospitals for sick children : read before the Dublin Obstetrical Society, January 8th, 1859 / by William Moore.

  • Moore, William
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On infantile mortality, and the establishment of hospitals for sick children : read before the Dublin Obstetrical Society, January 8th, 1859 / by William Moore. 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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    prevalence among young children. These diseases are peculiarly obnoxious to large manufacturing towns and districts. We all must admit that sudden vicis- situdes of temperature induce pulmonary and bron- chial diseases generally, and that improper food pro- duces diarrhoea. But Mr. Simon naturally inquires, “ why should the death-rates vary as they do in dif- ferent districts of the country. Thus, the death-rates in three of the healthiest country districts of England from these diseases, is 925 ; in the unhealthiest district it is 6.895! Why are non-infectious infantile diseases seven times as fatal in one district as another ? In reply to this question, he considers the complaints separately : 1st, nervous disorders of early life, killed in nine years, from 1848 to 1856, 330,881 young per- sons, or 37,000 annually. The average mortality is 2^ times as high throughout the north-western counties as throughout the eastern, south eastern, and south midland districts. Two-thirds of these deaths are registered as by “ convulsions.” The foul and vitiated state of the atmosphere has been the assigned cause of this evil, the mortality in the Dublin Lying-in-Hos- pital having been wonderfully reduced by more effi- cient ventilation of the wards. 2. The death-rate amongst infants from non-tubercular diseases, almost exclusively inflammations of the respiratory organs, is very large, 28,763 infants having died of pneumonia, bronchitis, and croup, in 1856. The diseases seem also attributable in a great measure to the inhalation of impure air ; the children who are freely exposed to the air in rural districts, being comparatively exempt, whilst those who are “ cooped up ” in close rooms, as in towns, readily fall victims to such poisonous influ- ences. 3. Diarrhoea and dysentery annually extin- guishes more than 11,000 infants under five years of age—the causes of these diseases are to be found in bad food, deficient sewerage and ventilation ; here also the death-rates vary from 76 to 1.779. The gross mor-
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