A practical treatise on the diseases of infancy and childhood / by T.H. Tanner.

  • Thomas Hawkes Tanner
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical treatise on the diseases of infancy and childhood / by T.H. Tanner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    ignorance of nurses and parents; and to other removable causes. So directly is infant life influenced by good or bad management, that less than a century ago the London work- houses presented the almost incredible result of twenty-three deaths in every twenty-four infants under one year of age ! this frightful devastation being allowed to go on for a long time almost unnoticed, as it was deemed beyond the reach of remedy. But when, in consequence of a parliamentary in- quiry, an improved system of management was adopted, and the parish officers of London and Westminster were obliged to send their infant poor to be nursed in the country, at proper distances from town, the proportion of deaths was speedily reduced from 2,600 to 450 a year.* Mr. McCul'loch, in his Statistical Account of the British Empire,^ quotes a table from the Lancet of 1835-36, show- ing the births and deaths under five years of age, according to the London Bills of Mortality, for one hundred years, in five periods of twenty years each, and also the number dying under five years of age out of one hundred born; the results of which demonstrate that the mortality of children in London has been constantly on the decline. The table runs thus:— 1730-49 1750-69 1770-89 1790-1809 1810-29 Total births, . . . Total deaths un- ] der five years, J 315,156 285,08V 307,395 195,094 319,477 180,058 386,393 159,571 477,910 151,794 Dying per cent. 1 under five years, / 74-5 63-0 51-5 41-5 31-8 Here it appears that in the 20 years, 1730-49, out of 100 born, 74-5 died under the age of 5 years; while during the 20 years, 1810-29, only 31-8 died out of the same number. * Dr. Andrew Combe, On the Management of Infancy. 6th ed. p. 3. Edinburgh, 1847. f Page 543. 4th ed. London, 1854.