The effect of the cold weather in the early part of 1895 on the admission of medical cases into the Royal Edinburgh Infirmary. With a note on some earlier periods of severe weather / by A. Lockhart Gillespie.

  • Gillespie Alexander Lockhart, 1865-1904.
Date:
[1895?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The effect of the cold weather in the early part of 1895 on the admission of medical cases into the Royal Edinburgh Infirmary. With a note on some earlier periods of severe weather / by A. Lockhart Gillespie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    Sanitary Institute.] “ The effect of the Cold Weather in the Early part of 1895 on the Admission of Medical Cases into the Royal Edinburgh Infirmary. With a note on some earlier periods of Severe Weather,” by A. Lockhart Gillespie, M.D., F.R.C.P.E. In a paper read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 189b, I gave the results of an investigation into the influence of various weather conditions on the type of the cases admitted into the medical wards of the Royal Edinburgh Infirmary. The remarkable divergence between the meteorological conditions prevailing during the earlier weeks of 1895 and of 1896 led me to work out the differences of the admissions into these wards for the two periods. The figures for several cold periods which have occurred during recent years were also noted. The periods under review comprise the first eleven weeks of 1895 and 1896 ; six weeks from December 7th, 1874, to January 17th, 1875; eleven weeks from December 2nd, 1878, to February 16th, 1879; twelve weeks from November 15th, 1880, to February 6th, 1881; five weeks from November 26th, to December 31st, 1882; and seven weeks from December 8th, 1890, to January 24th, 1891. As a standard, the means for the seven years from October 1st, 1888, to September 30th, 1895, as given in the former paper, are taken, and though it should be remembered that the means of the actual numbers are of little value owing to the increased number of admissions, the per- centages of admissions of particular classes of disease to the total admissions are, of course, directly comparable. Noticing first the eleven weeks which began the years 1895, 1896, we find that the mean temperature of these weeks in the east of Scotland district of the Meteorological Council, was only 30°*9 in 1895, 39°#9 in 1896. The highest shade tempera- ture recorded were almost identical, 58° and 57°, but the minimum in 1895 fell as low as — 17°, against 18° in 1896. The mean of the weekly maxima in 1895 was 45°*4, the minima 7°*5, in 1896 53°*6 and 24°J respectively. The total excess of the temperature mean in 1896, compared with 1895, for the eleven weeks reached the large figures of about 99°. The rain- fall was almost the same for both periods, 4*70 in. and 4*24 in.; the percentage of possible sunshine was also very similar, 22’5 per cent, and 24*0 per cent., while during both the barometric type was identical, six weeks anti-cyclonic and five weeks cyclonic. On turning to the admissions into the Infirmary (see Table I.) we find that the total admissions into the medical wards averaged 93*6 per week in 1895, 84*5 per week in 1896, or a decrease of