Health of towns : report of the speeches of E. Chadwick, Esq., Dr. Southwood Smith ... and others, at a meeting held ... to promote a subscription in behalf of the widow and children of Dr. J.R. Lynch.

Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health of towns : report of the speeches of E. Chadwick, Esq., Dr. Southwood Smith ... and others, at a meeting held ... to promote a subscription in behalf of the widow and children of Dr. J.R. Lynch. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the most strenuous writers in support of sanitary measures was Mr. John Johns, a member of the Town Mission of Liverpool. From him I derived important corroborative in¬ formation derived from his house visits of the lower dis¬ tricts. He has been recently killed by the epidemic at that place. I beg leave to read the account of his death, which a lady has sent me from thence. “ Mr. Johns died of fever, caught in his visits to his poor people, after remonstrance from his friends, and using every precaution which he considered duty would allow.” She gives examples of what he found in his visits—“ In one small cellar, -with no window, eighteen persons in fever, lying in wet dirty straw. In one house he counted eighty-one, in another sixty-one, in every stage of fever, on straw in the corners. I be¬ lieve these were (as I know one house with thirty-one cases was) uninhabited houses, into which the poor people had crept for shelter. A subscription was entered into by the supporters of the mission who had sent him on his dangerous duty, for his widow and family. It is now above 2,000/.” After alluding to the deaths of medical men, for whose families no subscriptions have yet been raised, she says, “ I much wish something may be done for them. It is a cruel injustice. At the time of the cho¬ lera nothing was done for the families of the medical men who died.” (Hear, hear.) I will now ask your consideration of a summary of the recent deaths in the service of alleviation. At Liverpool, one minister of the Established Church died. One curate had a narrow escape. One Dissenting minister died. There are stated to have been eighteen Roman Catholic priests at Liverpool; the deaths of eight of them from fever have been registered. I believe that of a ninth may be added. But of twenty-five medical officers and their assistants, twenty have had fever, either in a mild or a severe form, and it was fatal in four instances. This is exclusive of assistants. Ten relieving-officers and assistant relieving-officers have been carried off there by fever. The captain of the Akbar hospital-ship and his assistant have been cut off. In all, nineteen of the persons engaged in the administration of relief have fallen at Liverpool. At Manchester, Mr. Walker, a medical officer, who had written a work on the diseases of the eye, and other¬ wise contributed to the advancement of medical science, had been cutoff; also two relieving-officers—in all, fifteen officers engaged in the public service in the administration of relief. Mr. Noble, a medical officer who had written on sanitary improvement, has been attacked by fever. At Leeds there have died the junior curate of the Leeds parish church, and five Roman Catholic clergymen, and one medical man, who took upon himself the duties of the medical officer when laid prostrate by fever, caught the fever