Political medicine : being the substance of a discourse lately delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, on medicine, considered in its relations to government and legislation / by H. Maunsell.

  • Maunsell, Henry, 1806-1879.
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Political medicine : being the substance of a discourse lately delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, on medicine, considered in its relations to government and legislation / by H. Maunsell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    sistencies I make no attempt; nor do I believe that there is yet sufficient knowledge of the subject to admit of the questions involved being settled ; but I do think it must be admitted, that it is only by submit- ting them to the oi Political Medicine that any approach to a determination of them can ever be arrived at. We find, however, from what I have already stated, that no such step has ever yet been taken. The answers of Mr Thurburn, as quoted above, are of themselves sufficient to showthis; but Mr. Holroyd’s and Dr. Bowring’s pamphlets contain abundance of additional evidence on the subject. In Alexandria, the board of health is composed, not of medical men, but of a select number of European con- suls ; and, in Great Britain, the actual administration of quarantine regulations is entrusted to ordinary custom-house officers. Even the superintendent of the lazaret at Malta is a captain ; and so badly and un- medically are some of these establishments managed in the east, that Dr. Bowring informs us, that, while the average mortality of plague, under good medical « treatment, often does not exceed thirty per cent, yet, in the lazaret at Alexandria, ninety per cent, died in 1833, and in 1836, seventy-seven per cent. Nor is this to be wondered at, when we find the same gentleman stating, that he has seen a person, coming out of his imprisonment in the lazaret at Syra, having had his garments devoured by rats, and his person disfigured by vermin. Finally, I cannot but think, that the fore- going scanty statements are sufficient to bear out my case ; and I must be permitted to express my hope.