Observations on the management of the poor in Scotland, and its effects on the health of the great towns / by William Pulteney Alison.

Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the management of the poor in Scotland, and its effects on the health of the great towns / by William Pulteney Alison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    47/222 page 27
    hospitals in Glasgow were 8512, and in Manchester 1391. The number of hospital patients in fever at Leeds, a manufacturing town with 123,000 inhabi- tants, was 274 in the year, on an average of seven years before 1836,—when the average at Glasgow was 1842. In Newcastle and Gateshead, the popu- lation of which is nearly 58,000, the number of le- ver patients taken into the institution appropriated to them was only 8 in the year for some years before 18] 7, and only 39 in the year for seven years pre- ceding 1836.* In Carlisle and its neighbourhood, a population of above 32,000 yielded 63 fever patients in the year to the house of recovery, on an average of seventeen years before 1838, but in that year there was an epidemic affecting about 600 persons, of whom 265 came into the hospital. In some other English towns, particularly those which are not ma- nufacturing, the exemption from fever for many years together has been still more complete. I have been favoured with statements from Oxford and Bath. In the former, a population of 16,000 does not afford to the Infirmary five fever patients in the year, and very few to the workhouse. In the latter, where the population is 55,000, it is merely said thatfew cases of fever occur either at the hospital or workhouse.” This exemption, in the case of these towns, is certainly of many years standing. As a contrast, let us look for a moment at the ra- * Cowan’s Vital Statistics, p. 11.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3