An Essay on Hospital Mortality

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1877 Excerpt: ...which I think no objections can be raised, chiefly because it is to be hoped that they are only a temporary expedient. We do not yet know with absolute certainty that vaccination, however perfect, will completely stamp out smallpox, but the evidence is conclusive that if every human being were once satisfactorily placed under vaccine protection, the disease would cease to have the mortality of nearly 20 per cent., which these returns show. It would appear from the facts which I have been able to gather concerning the smallpox epidemics of the last six years, that a wave of this disease has recently passed over the whole country. The differences seen in the mortality of smallpox in various towns are probably in greater part due to a difference in the extent of the protective influence of vaccination, but there is reason to suspect that here, as elsewhere, hospital conditions interfere to produce a higher mortality. Both of these influences are probably in operation to cause the difference in the smallpox mortality of Greenock and Paisley. It is more than likely that the larger floating population of Greenock brings into that town an undue share of smallpox nidus; but we have already seen that there is a greater tendency to death generally amongst the patients at the Greenock Infirmary than there is in that at Paisley. The long roll of hospitals which have to admit typhus fever, and the terrible mortality it inflicts, are the result of a neglect of sanitary precautions discreditable to our advanced civilisation. This disease is one which is entirely removable, yet there are few towns of any size in which it does not occur, and it has an average mortality of nearly 16 per cent. It is inexpressibly shocking to find that in London its mortality is so high as 215...