Report of the Verral Charitable Society.

  • Verral Charitable Society (London, England)
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Verral Charitable Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    7/46
    APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC. u The Society for the Treatment, and attendance at their own Homes, of Poor Persons afflicted with Diseases and Distor¬ tions of the Spine, Chest, Hips, &c.” has, since the commencement of its charitable labours, increased in its beneficial effects to a degree scarcely to have been calculated upon by its original Foundress. In the generality of cases the patients have been amongst the number of the most diseased, helpless, and destitute of human beings, and living in squalid habitations of misery and want. Many of them having received relief from their sufferings, and been restored to shape and health, have been thereby enabled to resume or commence the means of supporting themselves. It was in consequence of observing the great number of deformed objects amongst the Poor, during a residence in London, that this Society was projected; for it is remarkable, and may seem surprising, that in 1 his immense metropolis, celebrated as it is for the number and variety of its charitable institutions, there did not exist, previous to the formation of this Society, a single association or public institution, having for its object the treatment of the deformed poor. Whilst wretchedness and illness of almost every other description had found its appropriate Asylum, or had been offered the means of cure, distortions of the Spine, of the Chest, and of the Hips, with all their concomitant and most formidable evils, had hitherto met with no public sympathy, and had certainly never been afforded any distinct public help. There are cases to which no Hospitals or Infirmaries can give effectual assist¬ ance. In the first place, cases of mere distortion they will not admit at all; — cases of actual disease, either of the spine or the hips, they occa¬ sionally receive; but they do not, and they cannot, retain them long enough to afford them a fair chance of cure. Numerous as the cases are, and tedious in their progress of cure, were they to be retained till that should be effected, they would be the means of excluding all those more active cases for which a general Hospital is so eminently required. Many indeed who have been suffering under spinal and similar com plaints, and been received into the Hospitals for the usually allowed period, and then discharged without cure, have afterwards had that object effected under the treatment and care of this Society.
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