The present position of state medicine in England : being an address delivered before the British Medical Association at the Owens College, Manchester, on August 7, 1877 / by Arthur Ransome.

  • Arthur Ransome
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The present position of state medicine in England : being an address delivered before the British Medical Association at the Owens College, Manchester, on August 7, 1877 / by Arthur Ransome. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    In England the course of Preventive Medicine shows many long stagnant periods, and not a few heavy penalties for the neglect of hygienic laws that had long before been discovered. Each great step forward is however usually marked by the disappearance of some disease that had previously weighed heavily upon the nation; and thus we may note either some unconscious advance of the people in hygienic practice, or the recognition by the State of the possibility of preventing some cause of disease. In the disappearance from our shores of such diseases as leprosy, the “ sweating sickness,” the great plagues and other epidemics of the middle ages, we probably see evidence of the reformation of national social habits in matters of clothing and cleanliness, and other modes of life. In the decadence of others, such as ague, typhoid fever, and cholera, the improvement has coincided with improved drainage and better water supply; but in the amelioration of these diseases, as well as in the banish- ment of such fearful complaints as the jail distemper and scurvy, we may mark the direct outcome of legislative interference. The deplorable outbreak of the last-named disease, in the Arctic Expedition of 1875, was simply an instance of the slowness with which truths, well recog- nised by our profession, filter down into non-medical minds. When we look around us to learn the present position of sanitary reform it might, at the first glance, appear as if we were now advancing on the top of the wave of progress. The importance of the national health has been fully recognised by the Legislature. Two ministries have attempted to deal thoroughly with the subject, and though we may have had recalled to us more than once, in reference to it, the sad utterance of Solomon, “ Vanity of Vanities,