A supplementary report on the results of a spiecal (sic) inquiry into the practice of interment in towns made at the request of Her Majestys' Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, / by Edwin Chadwick.

  • Great Britain. Poor Law Commissioners.
Date:
1843
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A supplementary report on the results of a spiecal (sic) inquiry into the practice of interment in towns made at the request of Her Majestys' Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, / by Edwin Chadwick. 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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    in a state of putrefaction, to have experienced a sort of weakness and the loss of appetite ; but the phenomena were never otherwise than transient. During the year 1829, the weather being ex- cessively hot, decomposition advanced with a degree of rapidity such as I have rarely witnessed: at that season the emanations became so irritating, that they paralyzed the hands, producing small pustules and an excessive itching, and yet my general health was in nowise affected. Again, whilst it is stated by M. Duchatelet that students who attend the dissecting-rooms are sometimes seriously injured, and even killed by pricks and cuts with the instruments of dis- section, yet it is denied that they are subject to any illness from the emanations from the remains other than a nausea and a dysentery for two or three days at the commencement of their studies. Fevers the students of medicine are confessedly liable to, but he says it is only when they are in attendance on the living patients in the fever wards. Sir Benjamin Brodie pointed out to me, that from the precautions taken, by the removal of such portions of the viscera as might be in an advanced state of decomposition, and from the ventilation of dissecting-rooms being much improved, the emanations from the bodies dissected are not so great as might be supposed; nevertheless, he observes:— There is no doubt that there are few persons who during the anatomical season are engaged for many hours daily in a dissecting-room for a con- siderable time, whose health is not affected in a greater or less degree ; and there are some whose health suffers considerably. I have known several young men who have not been able to prosecute their studies in the dis- secting-room for more than three or four weeks at a time, without being compelled to leave them and go into the country. The great majority, however, do not suffer to that extent, nor in such a way as to cause inter- ruption to their studies; and, altogether, the evil is not on a sufficiently large scale to attract much notice, even among the students themselves. A writer on public health, Dr. Dunglison, maintains that we have no satisfactory proof that malaria ever arises from ani- mal putrefaction singly; and as evidence of this position he adduces the alleged fact of the numbers of students who pass through their education without injury ; yet he admits— In stating the opinion that putrefaction singly does not occasion malarious disease, we do not mean to affirm that air highly charged with putrid miasmata may not, in some cases, powerfully impress the nervous system so as to induce syncope and high nervous disorder ; or that, when such miasmata are absorbed by the lungs in a concentrated state, they may not excite putrid disorders, or dispose the frame to unhealthy erysipelatous affections. On the contrary, experiment seems to have shown that they are deleterious when injected; and cases are detailed in which, when exhaled from the dead body, they have excited serious mischief in those exposed to their action. According to Percy, a Dr. Chambon was required by the Dean of the Facultc de Medicine of Paris to demonstrate the liver and its appendages before the faculty on applying for his licence. The decomposition of the subject given him for the demonstration was so far advanced, that Chambon drew the attention of the Dean to it, but he was ^vJ B 2