Observations medical and political: on the small-pox and inoculation; and on the decrease of mankind at every age, with a comparative view of the diseases most fatal to London during ninety years. Including an attempt to demonstrate in what manner London may save near two thousand ... lives annually ... / [William Black].

  • Black, William, 1749-1829
Date:
1781
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations medical and political: on the small-pox and inoculation; and on the decrease of mankind at every age, with a comparative view of the diseases most fatal to London during ninety years. Including an attempt to demonstrate in what manner London may save near two thousand ... lives annually ... / [William Black]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    [ ipo ] * « V • fea, no other is fo inimical to navigators: on that element it is yet the fea mon- fter and tyrant : the effectual antidotes are now fo well known, that I dare to main¬ tain multitudes of the lives loft by this dif- cafe at fea, are facrificed to grofs negligence, or to impolick and inhuman ceconomy. From 1671 to 1686, the deaths by Scurvy are in the London bills nine thoufand, four hundred and fifty-one, and in the fucceeding fifteen years,five hundred and fixty-nine only. It is common I know for perfons ignorant of medicine, often to call various cutaneous foul- nefs of the fkin, by the name of fcurvy. Whether all thofe therefore died of the ge¬ nuine fcurvy, I cannot decide. Another fuf- picion of fome weight with me, is this : the theory of the laft century imputed many dif- eafes to this fpecific <c cacoethes” as they called it; perhaps this theory and prevalent opinion may in fome degree have influenced the fearchers report. The fcurvy, the liver and the nerves, have been convenient hiding places for pompous ignorance. In the pre- fent century, fcurvy has deftroyed very few in London, and even of this final 1 number fet down in the bills, the difeafe in feveral may have been bred at fea ; in London, the lodg- ings