Essays and papers on some fallacies of statistics concerning life and death, health and disease : with suggestions towards an improved system of registration / by Henry W. Rumsey.

  • Henry Wyldbore Rumsey
Date:
1875
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays and papers on some fallacies of statistics concerning life and death, health and disease : with suggestions towards an improved system of registration / by Henry W. Rumsey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and then from Birmingham, while the unsatisfactory proposals in Sir Charles Adderley’s Bills, and the contemptible provisions of Mr. Stansfeld’s Act, still leave the subject in a wholly unsettled ~ condition. The last Report of this Committee [B. M. Journal, August 22, 1874, p. 246,] so thoroughly exposes the present unsatisfactory state of the question, that I subjoin it :— REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE REGISTRATION OF DISEASE. In accordance with a resolution passed at the last annual meeting of the British Medical Association in London, a memorial has been presented to the President of the Local Government Board, praying for the establishment of a ‘ National System of Registration of Disease,’ and a petition to the same effect has been laid before the House of Commons by Dr. Lyon Playfair. ; The urgent need of such a registration of sickness is abundantly proved by reference to most of the reports of the numerous medical officers of health appointed under the Public Health Act of 1872. Many of these officers com- plain of ‘the want of early information of the outbreak of infectious or epidemic disease’ in their districts; and that there are no ‘records of disease at their disposal ;? ‘no contributors to supply them carefully and promptly with statistics of sickness and mortality, or to announce the presence of epidemic disease.’ Attempts have, indeed, been made by the Local Government Board to satisfy these demands, by empowering the clerks to the guardians to copy out the entries of all new cases of disease reported at each meeting of the guar- dians, and to forward these returns to the medical officers of health within the ‘ several unions; but it has been pointed out by several of the more experienced of these officers that such returns are of little practical value; that, as one eminent writer says (B.M. Journal, May 30th, page 717), ‘they are an inefficient and fallacious provision, and cannot secure an accurate, scientific, and trust- worthy record of disease,’ and that whilst, on the one hand, it is unjust to the Poor Law medical staff thus to appropriate their information, without payment, and without any means of correction, the health officers, on the other hand, cannot obtain from these returns the details that are often essential for the ' suppression of disease; it is furthermore most important that these records should be sent direct to the medical officer of health. In the recently passed Sanitary Laws Amendment Act, no provision is made for preventing the spread of infectious diseases, either by the isolation of the sick, or by providing for speedy information of new cases of infectious disorders. It appears, from a recent parliamentary return moved for by Mr. W. H. Smith, that the deaths in England alone from zymotic diseases amount to 111,000 annually, and it is probable that the number of persons attacked is at least six times as great. Without a systematic registration of these attacks, it is hopeless to attempt to suppress outbreaks of epidemic disease; and your Committee would call attention to a proposal for the compulsory notification of all cases of infectious
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