Address introductory to the fifth course of lectures in the Atlanta Medical College / by Joseph P. Logan.

  • Logan, Joseph P. (Joseph Payne), 1820-1891.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address introductory to the fifth course of lectures in the Atlanta Medical College / by Joseph P. Logan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    the 80,000 who annually pass through those wards, we have a saving of 500 human beings, with the period of their suffering greatly lessened. In England the term of human life has been greatly lengthened ; the returns of the Registrar General of England show a steady and notable decrease in the rate of mortality—the difference, it is said, between London in the ] 7th and Loudon in the 19th cen- tury, being as great as between Londou in ordinary years and the same city in the Cholera. In France the duration of life has increased in the ratio of 52 days for each year, during a period of 66 years, for which we have the statistics, although that revolutionary and warlike nation shed seas of blood, not only in her Cities, but upon every battle-field of Europe. In Surgical practice, the saving of life at present exceeds by more than one third the results of ope- rations at the commencement of the present century. In the practice of that brauch of Medical Science, around which clusters such interesting associations and gloomy apprehensions, which make the profoundest appeals to the sympathy of the Medical man, and which is so intimately connected with our earliest appearance in the world, it is stated by Dr. Merriman, that one hundred and fifty years ago, one in forty died, and at the close of his tables in 1828, only one in one hundred and seven died ; and at this time (in the hands of scientific men) perhaps not one in 250 dies. And, gentlemen, I have the great pleasure of stating that the Hospital practice of our own country exhibits the same gratifying success in the treatment of disease, the statistics of the Hospitals ot our large cities showing almost precisely similar results to those furnished from Europe. In short, whether we examine the reports ot the Registrar General, of England, the data of the Carlisle and Northampton life tables; the statistics of the Bureau Centrale, of Paris, or the publications of the Great Hos- pitals of our own country, the same results are presented,* and thus Medicine claims a position in the calculations of *Comegy».