Volume 2

First report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire whether any and what special means may be requisite for the improvement of the health of the metropolis, with minutes of evidence.

  • Great Britain. Metropolitan Sanitary Commission.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire whether any and what special means may be requisite for the improvement of the health of the metropolis, with minutes of evidence. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    I do not think I ever myself witnessed a case in which the diarrhoea had existed longer than four days, and the usual time would in general be only a few hours; that, however, would afford suffi- cient time for the application of remedies, capable, in the great majority of cases, of preventing the further progress of the disease. The opinion and practice of Russian physicians at the present time are in perfect accordance with their views. In all the accounts that we have recently received, the medical men who are treating the epidemic which is now prevailing, first and prominently urge, That the greatest attention must be paid to the diarrhoea, which they say, precedes cholera. From advices which we have just received from Constantinople we learn that diarrhoea was prevalent and severe in Trebizond during the whole month of August, before cholera broke out in its Asiatic form early in September, and that^in those persons in whom the disease advanced to this latter stage, diarrhoea was an early and prominent symptom. It is notorious that diarrhoea was extremely prevalent in all the towns of the United Kingdom in which Asiatic cholera broke out in 1832, though at that time the observation had not been clearly and generally made that it constantly precedes an attack, and is in fact the actual commencement of the disease. In the detailed accounts of particular cases occasionally transmitted from the Local Boards to the Central Board of Health, constant mention is made of the presence of diarrhoea, often two or three days before the violent attack came on. But, perhaps, one of the most interesting and instructive illustrations of the extent to which this premonitory system is present in a population in which cholera is prevalent is afforded by the remarkable history of the progress and termination of this epidemic at Bilston and the neighbouring district in 1832. This pestilence raged in Bilston with greater violence than in any other part of the United Kingdom- Out of 14,700 inhabitants, 3568 were attacked with cholera, out of whom 792 died in less than seven weeks; that is, one-fourth of the whole population were subjects of the disease, and one-fifth part of those attacked died. The Rev. William Leigh, the enlightened and benevolent clergy- man of Bilston, whose exertions to mitigate the sufferings of his parishioners during this melancholy visitation were most exem- plary and indefatigable, gives the following description of their con- dition :— The pestilence, he says, continues its ravages amongst us in a fright- ful manner. Our necessities are increasing every hour, and our resources are fast failing us. Three hundred pounds have been granted to the Board of Health out of the poor-rates ; but this sum will not pay for the coffins of the dead. All kind of business is at a stand. Nothing reigns here but want and disease, death and desolation. Two of our medical