A supplementary report on the results of a special inquiry into the practice of interment in towns.Chadwick, Edwin
History
A supplementary report on the results of a special inquiry into the practice of interment in towns.
Chadwick, Edwin
Burial; Cemeteries -- Great Britain; Mortality -- Statistics; Public health -- Great Britain; Working class -- Great Britain
Again, whilst it is stated by M. Duchâtelet that students who attend the
dissecting-rooms are sometimes seriously injured, and even killed by
pricks and cuts with the instruments of dissection, 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 considerable 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 dissecting-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
interruption 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 animal 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—
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