Report of the experience of the St. Marylebone infirmary, since 1827, with respect to admissions, duration of treatment, mortality, and other statistical results, according to age and sex / by John Clendinning.

  • Clendinning, J. (John), 1798-1848.
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the experience of the St. Marylebone infirmary, since 1827, with respect to admissions, duration of treatment, mortality, and other statistical results, according to age and sex / by John Clendinning. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    recent advances in the mind of the more intelligent classes, towards a healthy state of opinion and feeling with regard to the poor. As admission into this “ Sick House” or Infirmary is, morally at least, aright of the locally resident sick poor of a very large and populous parish; the number of its inmates is subject to all the influences of season, weather, epidemic constitution, commercial activity, and other sources of fluctuation; so that most years the sick population has varied from 150 or 160 in the fine season (about June usually) to 300 or 320, 330, and upwards ; the extreme in this direction happening usually in January. These numbers are exclusive of the much larger number of chronic or slight cases prescribed for in the forenoon, whether coming from the workhouse or their own homes, at the Infirmary, by the resi- dent medical officers. In common with other metropolitan asylums of sickness, general as well as parochial, the registers of the Infirmary were formerly kept in an old-fashioned and very imperfect manner, and -were ill adapted to forward many of the objects of the medical statist. Since 1840, however, a better system has been in operation. At the suggestion of the writer, a form of registration has been adopted, substantially in ac- cordance with the views of the London Statistical Society, and coinciding in most points with that recommended by the Committee on Hospital Statistics: so that hereafter the records of the Infirmary may be ex- pected to furnish very valuable materials for numerical investigation of the law's of disease, more especially regarding the disorders of infancy and early childhood, and of extreme age, which are all compara- tively little known in the wards of the general hospitals; also regarding the duration of several classes of incurable disease, organic or functional only, wdiich are commonly either not admitted, or discharged after a short stay, and respecting which it is of the greatest importance, with a view to the extension of the practice of life assurance to its legitimate limits, that accurate statistical information should be obtained. Materials for this Report. The facts that collectively form the subject matter of this report, are contained in 11 chief tables, exclusive of subordinate tabulations illus- trative of those 11 principal. 1. The first table presents a general view of the experience of the infirmary, as to annual admissions and deaths, w'ith their ratios, in 17 years, commencing with July 1827, ending with June 1844, without distinction of sex, age, &c. 2. The second table gives the admissions of 8-| years, ending with March 1836, and distinguishing sexes and ages, but not years. 3. Table III. presents similar facts, similarly analysed and arranged, for 4^ years, ending with June 1840. 4- Table IV. gives the duration of treatment for 8f years, ending March 1836, and stated in weeks and lunar months, with distinction of sex only. 5. Table V. gives the like facts in like order for 4i years, ending June 1840. 6. and 7. Table VI. gives the average stay in the sick-house, ac- cording to sex and age, for the period 1827—1836; and Table VII. gives the like results for the subsequent period, 1836—1840. h 2