Abstract of the proceedings of the public meeting held at Exeter Hall, Dec. 11, 1844 : containing the speeches of the most noble the Marquess of Normanby, chairman ... together with a form of petition.
- Health of Towns Association (London, England)
- Date:
- [1844?]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Abstract of the proceedings of the public meeting held at Exeter Hall, Dec. 11, 1844 : containing the speeches of the most noble the Marquess of Normanby, chairman ... together with a form of petition. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.
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![of llie whole subject, and should be intrusted for execu- tion to authorities possessed of appropriate skill and ade- Cjuate power, and should not he confined to localities, but be at least as general as the spread of the evil, and that according as these tundainental principles aie regaided will be the success of any remedial measures. Your petitioners therefore humbly pray that your Right Honourable House will, at the earliest ])racticable opportunity, take into consideration the propriety of establishing general and efficient measures and autho- rities for the administering of judicious sanatory re- gulations. And your petitioners will ever pray. Dr. SouTHWOOD Smith then said, before the meeting was asked to sign this petition, he w'ished to say one word. Suppose there was any particular employment, any branch of manufacture, carried on in England alone at the cost of 40,000 lives and upwards every year—who could come to the knowdedge of that fact and ever rest until the pe- culiar circumstances in this employment which pro- duced such a result were changed, or the employment itself suppressed? But suppose that this employment not only put to death 40,000 persons annually, a slaughter equal to that of the battle of Waterloo, but destroyed them by a death attended with the most intense suftering. These were not mere suppositions, they were realities; they were the ordinary results of daily experience : for it was proved beyond doubt that this number of persons did actually perish every year from causes entirely re- movable, while the vast majority of these victims perished by fever. Now of all the diseases to which the human frame is subject, fever is among the most painful. He had himself passed through it more than once, and knew the sufferings it inflicts. He had passed through it, surrounded by dear and affectionate friends, under every external alleviating condition and circumstance ; yet he could not at that moment recollect without terror the anguish he endured, as if in every sentient fibre of the frame, and the still greater mental suffering arising from the frightful delirium which is so constant an attendant on this malady. But he constantly saw persons enduring the same suffering without any alleviating circumstance, under almost every conceivable external influence which could augment the misery; and it should never be forgotten that the combination of circumstances which so dreadfully](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24931615_0037.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
