On hospitalism and the causes of death after operations / by John Eric Erichsen.

  • Erichsen, John Eric, 1818-1896.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On hospitalism and the causes of death after operations / by John Eric Erichsen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    in town hospitals ; the other to the results of amputa- tions in country and private practice. The accuracy of these latter has been seriously impugned. With that question I have nothing to do at present. The accuracy of those relating to hospital practice has been admitted by all—even by his most determined oppo- nents—for they have been derived from statistical returns furnished to him by the surgeons and registrars of the various hospitals to which they relate. The mortality attendant upon these is 1 in 2*4, or 41'6 per cent. The lowest mortality in any of the metropolitan hospitals referred to by Sir James Simpson is 34-4 per cent.; the highest, 47*3 per cent. These statistics are carried down to the year 1868 ; they may consequently be looked upon as modern. They are defective in one important respect, that the causes of death are not recorded. I have collected from various sources others which will show that there has been, with one excep- tion, no material improvement since Simpson's were published, and that the same, or indeed a much higher, rate of mortality prevails in some other countries than in this. Thus, for instance, if we take the published records given in the reports of four of the largest Lon- don hospitals, containing together nearly 2,000 beds (Table B), carried down as late as last year, we find that out of a gross number of 621 amputations, 239 have died, or 36*7 per cent, (vide Table B); at the Edinburgh Infirmary, 43*3 per cent.; and at the Grlas- gow Infirmary, 39*1 (Simpson). The American returns are very good: thus, I find that at the Pennsylvania Hospital, the reports of which have been most accu- rately kept for a long series of years—from 1831 to