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ABSTRACT OF THE Inaugural Address
SEPTEMBER 18, 1897. ABSTRACT OF THE
that
AddressSanitary Inaugural Congress of
even
bright and kindrcd spixit ; and I guarantee that if imagination still gilds the remote history of the
paat you will thank your stars that your l1nes have
been cast in the cleaner and pleasanter places of the Victorian era. There is no doubt that the average the Institute sum of life has been Delivered at the Sixteenth sensibly prolonged. During the last at Leeds on Sept. 14th, quarter of a century the death-rate has been reduced from about 22 to 18 per annum, and whilst I give you sanitanans BY ROBERT your full meed of praise for having, by your excellent work, F.R.C.P. LL.D. M.P. abolished some diseases and lessened the incidence of others, we medical men intend to claim some credit too. We earlier it disease and treat far much better, on to address this diagnose making rising GENTLEMEN,-My feelings you less demands on the constitutional vigour of our patients, and afternoon are somewhat mixed, and I venture, although not keeping in mind the good old principle that prevention is very confidently, to hope that I may be able to use this better than cure. For the future let Professor Matthew platform as an authoritative tribune from which to speak Hay, of Aberdeen, speak. He writes to me:"Progress words which may be suggestive if not weighty. Such an of the death-rate downwards must in the future be less than A death-rate of 10 per 1000 would mean that opportunity probably only occurs once in a lifetime, and it in the past. born lived to 100 years or an average of that. everybody may well be a subject for anxious reflection how best to use, it will be found that the mutual elements of Probably without abusing, the indulgence of the influential audience decay in men, as in all living things, which make eventually I see before me. But other considerations have urgently for death, independently of environment, will not perclaimed my attention since Sir Douglas Galton first whispered mit of a lower general death-rate than about 14 to 15 even into my ear the tempting offer of this presidential chair, and under the most favourable hygienic conditions reasonably attainable. So that by the time we have gone as far in as this day drew nearer they also came nearer to my mind. The responsibility of an introductory orator on such ani reducing the death-rate as we have come in the past quarter occasion as this is much increased by the fact that hygiene of a century we shall have reached the ultimate minimum. has now become fashionable, and that most people nowadays but it will certainly not be in another quarter of a century.’’ know at all events the elementary principles on which it More evidence can be found in the Repcrts of the Local works. All great subjects like this, and more especially Government Board, where, under the skilful guidance of Sir those which involve some dislocation of antiquarian super- John Simon and Sir George Buchanan and Sir Richard stition and domestic prejudice, must pass through a variety Thorne Thorne, some of the most acute minds in England
FARQUHARSON, M.D. EDIN,, LOND., ABERD.,
of stages or cycles, and varying waves of interest beat on the mental shore. First, we have the stage of ridicule, a difficult one to get over, but which we have at last successfully surmounted. Next we find that when the general public recognise that we are in earnest the stage of active opposition sets in, and vested interests and pig-headed ignorance, and the selfcomplacent argument of ’’why not let it alone," are marshalled in warlike array againt the new broom which tries to sweep the Augean stable clean. But we have now nearly outlived all this ; ventilators are no longer stuffed up, the working classes, no less than their employers, are beginning to be connoisseurs in the quality of their atmospheric conditions, enjoy a good wash as much as a university graduate, and are fully prepared to appreciate the advantages of hygienic house accommodation at other people’s expense. Associations like our own, and the National Health Society, and the St. John Ambulance Association, and able and zealous missionaries, have not spoken and written in vain, and now we live in an age of sanitary progress, where the little knowledge, which is safe not dangerous, persuades its possessor of its scanty amount, and tells him where to go to make good his deficiencies. For instance, no properly instructed person in these enlightened days would take a house without a thorough inspection of, and report on, its sanitary arrangements ; water analysis and food analysis keep us fairly free from adulteration, and most of us know pretty well, or at all events know how to get the information, as to the amount of help given us by the law in keeping our health fairly sound. For the conclusion is inevitable that the race is to the swift and the battle to the strong, and that unless we are well equipped physically for the contest we will be outpaced and shoved aside, and laid on the shelf. The wellworn quotation from Herbert Spencer sums up the whole case: ’’ The first requisite of life is to be a good animal, and to be a nation of good animals is the first condition of national prosperity." [Dr. FarquhaMon here regretted the monotony of modern labour, which, he suggested, is largely due to the minute subdivision of employments. He then made some reference to recent advances in physiological knowledge and continued : Some will probably ask this question : " It is all very fine talking about fashion and popularity and progress ; can you show any tangible results7 Is the human race any longer at present than in the good old lived, or better, or happier " days of pre-hygiene7" Now if any lingering shade of romantic leaning towards the life conditions of medimval or post-mediseval England still haunts your mind, you may
been unravelling abstruse sanitary problems and tracking out from clues invisible to the ordinary eye sanitary defects which were poisoning districts and destroying human life. But these are scattered and not always accessible, and I strongly commend to yonr attention two capital little books which strike the have
nail very directly on the head. The first of these is by your respected townsman, Mr. Pridgin Teale, who, in the intervals of a brilliant and successful surgical career, has found time to preach the doctrine that a nation’s health is a nation’s wealth, and to furnish a series of object lessons of the most clear and practical if alarming kind. The second is by our esteemed friend and associate, Professor Corfield, one of the pioneers of sanitary progress, and it is called I I Disease and Defective House Sanitation." It consists of two short lectures, but it is crammed with suggestive matter, and he enumerates the following diseases as directly caused by the defects included in his title-sore throats, diphtheria, scarlet fever, blood poisoning, puerperel fever, pneumonia, diarrhoea, enteric fever, and general malaise. All these have resulted from badly-connected ventilating pipes, badlytrapped waste pipes, defective drains, split soil pipes, foul pan water closets, and very frequently from escapes of gas, a cause more especially of sore throats, new to me, I must confess. May I give you one other illustration ? I think it was in 1884 or 1885 that serious complaints began to be made about the drainage and ventilation of the Hriuse of Commons. A committee was appointed under the presidency of Sir Henry Roscoe to examine the whole question, and we had to tell the legislators on the basis of a very important investigation by the late Professor Carnelley, that they were actually breathing sewer gas, and that the sooner they put their house in order the better for themselves and the country. So &10,OCO were voted nem. con., Shone’s ejector cut us off from the main sewer, and I make so bold as to claim for this sanitary operation national importance in improving the health and temper of our senators and enhancing the quality of their work. The benefits conferred by modern civilisation are, however, accompanied by some drawbacks. In the seventeenth century the death-rate was said to be 7 per cent. ; it is now about 18 per 1000, the advantage being mainly between the ages of five and thirty-five, and our chances of reaching this maximum period of longevity are distinctly increased. The majority of us, however, are older than that, and we want to know what is to become of us, and vital statistics do not give us much comfort, for after middle life, when we stand on the tableland and look over the edge, before stepping downhill, we do not live longer and we break down sooner. Why is this ? One evil of civilisation is the tendency lay the ghost by diligent perusal of Simon’s "Englishto crowd into big towns, where hou:es are dear and often bad, Sanitary Institutions" and the "Health of Nations," in whichthe air is usually poisoned with smoke, and, as Dr. Poore has the work of Edwin Chadwick is reviewed by Richardson-well shown in his most interesting work on Rural Hygiene, No. 3864.
M
.
DR.
702
FARQUHARSON, M.P., ON THE RESULTS OF SANITATION.
are serious daggers connected with defects in our rising generation, must convince you that this increase of complicated arrangements for drainage and sewage disposal. pallor is only too real. This is depressing, but it has its bright side. No doubt it is [Dr. Farquharson here remarked that he wished to say a dangerous to be placed within easy reach of receptacles of word in favour of sexual selection, commending the Vicar of foul air and sewer gas, as we all are, and necessarily must Wakefield for choosing his wife as she chose her weddingbe, under the system of water-borne sewage common to our dress-" on account other wearing qualities." With respect great towns ; but the greater the risk the greater should be to vaccination, he suggested that the age should be raised so the care exerted to keep it off. It would be a good thing if as to avoid the teething and eruptive periods, and that every workmen, and more especially those who manufacture the infant should have four good marks, the operator being ’complicated structures which modern hygiene requires, preferably a public vaccinator. He then referred to school should not only feel but carry into practice the life and house accommodation, and concluded as follows :] Each of us is individually responsible to ourselves and to full sense of responsibility resting on them in connexion with their tlaje; and that they should be taught how a others for our scheme of sanitation, and then we pass into bit of scamped work-a leaking cesspool, or a badly placed the hands of local authorities, who are doing good work, who or constructed drain, or a badly-socketed soil-pipe, or generally give you value for your money, and whose beneficial any derangement in the mechanical contrivances designed to operations I hope you duly appreciate. But over them stands keep out the sewer gas which is always trying to force its the House of Commons, and I am glad of this opportunity of way in.-may destroy human life just as effectually as poison saying that I have a very poor opinion of that legislative ,or the knife. This is why I have persistently supported the assembly in its dealings with public health. Both sides are Plumbers’ Registration Bill in and out of Parliament, being bad, but that to which I belong is, I think; the worst, for - convinced, as I am, that without establishing a monopoly, or suspicion of scientific methods atld of progressive sanitation - doing any real harm to any vested interest, the establish- is deep-rooted in certain Radical quarters, and abstract views ment of a defined curriculum, followed by registration and of personal liberty and distrust of the so-called tyranny of - examination, will raise the status and character of the medical men sway a kind of plausible sentiment which is workman, and by increasing his sense of responsibility and usually irresistible in its paralysing effects on hygienic legis,his interest in his work will not only confer benefits on him, lation. As a Member lately remarked with refreshing but also on those by whom he is employed. frankness when we were considering the Public Health The next point I wish to refer to is the curious way in (Scotland) Bill, " When I see the doctors on both sides vhich, when we have abolished one set of diseases, another of the House my instinct tells me that something is wrong band of successors sometimes springs up hydra-headed to and I will vote against the amendment." Under such conplague poor humanity. I suppose it must be so, for we poor ditions the private Member can do nothing, beyond being mortals have not put on immortality, but must shuffle off usefully employed in stimulating public opinion in and outour mortal coils, in some swift or lingering way, so side the House, until particular problems reach the acute that if we are prevented from dying from one disease we stage and are taken under Government protection. In must of sad neoessity die from another, and diminution of conclusion, let me reiterate the strong wish I have already one death-rate involves increase somewhere else. Enteric publicly expressed in favour of a Ministry of Health, a fever remains pretty stationary in the last ten years, department of the State which would collect into one but a drop from 309 in 1876 to 175 in 1895 does credit to harmonious whole the scattered threads of sanitary legisla.our sanitary administration, and phthisis has gone down tion, which would focus all health questions, and admission from 26,443 in 1876 to 22,775 in 1894. Small-pox has taken to which would be an object of honourable ambition to the a satisfactory dip downward from 2405 in 1876 to 33 in 1895. best scientific talent of the day. Measles, a arlet fever, and whooping cough have killed fewer than formerly, but, per contra, diphtheria has largely
there
increased, and that is
no doubt due, as Sir R. Thorne Thorne which I have received from communication private jhim, " to the ever-growing facilities for personal infection, and other similar points have followed on the success in herding our child population into elementary schools at the ’very age at which they are most susceptible to this disease." 40 umber diseases have also increased, and the point I wish to make is this, that they are mostly diseases connected with the nervous system, and that Crichton Browne was probably right in hia opinion that not merely the nervous temperament, but the neurotic diathesis is on the increase among us. To begin with, it is a mournful but I fear an undoubted fact that more people go mad than formerly. I have not by me any .4r,atibtics to prove this beyond the report of the Registrargeneral for 1895, but there I find under the heading of insanity and general paralysis-a disease which was seldom ,heard of in former years-3620 deaths in 1895, against 933 rin 1876. Angina pectoris, a typically neurotic disorder, has increased ’within the same period from 397 to 696; valvular disease of the heart, which has some practical sympathy with the ,neurotic diathesis, has gone up from 274 to 10,072 ; whilst Bright’s disease, the frequent causation of which by sudden mental shock has been demonstrated by Clifford Albutt, hows an alarming rate of increase from 4100 to 8351. Cancer has nearly doubled since 1876, and diabetes reached its highest point in 1895, accounting for 2265 deaths over 10 in 1876, whilst most of us know only too well the firm grip taken by influenza on the British constitution, and the way in which in more recent years it has attacked the i mervous system. There seems no doubt, therefore, about ’the fact that we are now in the midst of a neurotic age, .and, moreover, an age which is essentially anaemic. How many young girls in any rank of life escape passing through .a blocdleas stage, which suggests a strike or a lock-out among their red corpuscles, and a consequent stagnation of their vital processes ?7 Let ua take another glance at the Registrar-General’s report, where we will see that deaths from arivemia, chlorosis, and lC1JCocythaemia have advanced from 576 in 1876 to 1883 in 1895, and this, together with a glance at the cheeks of the
saya in
ABSTRACT OF A
a
I
Post-Graduate Address ON
THE MEDICAL ASPECTS APPENDICITIS. Delivered at the West London
OF
Hospital on Feb. 3rd, 1897,
BY DONALD W. C. HOOD, M.D.CANTAB., F.R.C.P. LOND., SENIOR PHYSICIAN TO THE WEST LONDON HOSPITAL.
GENTLEMEN,-That form of local peritonitis so frequently right iliac fossa and known under the various names, typhlitis, perityphlitis, or appendicitis, presents met with in the
features of interest both to the physician and the surgeon. I have thought that it might be useful on the present occasion to discuss the disease from its medical aspects alone, for while fully acknowledging the brilliant achievements of surgery in connexion with abdominal diseases, I have no hesitation in affirming that we are in danger of looking upon the treatment of appendicitis from a too exclusive point of view, and I fear that many, by forgetfulness of the good results which follow a purely medical course of treatment, lose the valuable opportunit:es which only come to those who see the disease at the earliest
numerous
onset. In considering the diagnosis of appendicitis we must first glance at the forms or varieties under which the disease is met with, and we must consider briefly those affections with which it is liable to be confounded. We meet with appendicitis in one of two principal forms-namely, (1) an acute
that
AddressSanitary Inaugural Congress of
even
bright and kindrcd spixit ; and I guarantee that if imagination still gilds the remote history of the
paat you will thank your stars that your l1nes have
been cast in the cleaner and pleasanter places of the Victorian era. There is no doubt that the average the Institute sum of life has been Delivered at the Sixteenth sensibly prolonged. During the last at Leeds on Sept. 14th, quarter of a century the death-rate has been reduced from about 22 to 18 per annum, and whilst I give you sanitanans BY ROBERT your full meed of praise for having, by your excellent work, F.R.C.P. LL.D. M.P. abolished some diseases and lessened the incidence of others, we medical men intend to claim some credit too. We earlier it disease and treat far much better, on to address this diagnose making rising GENTLEMEN,-My feelings you less demands on the constitutional vigour of our patients, and afternoon are somewhat mixed, and I venture, although not keeping in mind the good old principle that prevention is very confidently, to hope that I may be able to use this better than cure. For the future let Professor Matthew platform as an authoritative tribune from which to speak Hay, of Aberdeen, speak. He writes to me:"Progress words which may be suggestive if not weighty. Such an of the death-rate downwards must in the future be less than A death-rate of 10 per 1000 would mean that opportunity probably only occurs once in a lifetime, and it in the past. born lived to 100 years or an average of that. everybody may well be a subject for anxious reflection how best to use, it will be found that the mutual elements of Probably without abusing, the indulgence of the influential audience decay in men, as in all living things, which make eventually I see before me. But other considerations have urgently for death, independently of environment, will not perclaimed my attention since Sir Douglas Galton first whispered mit of a lower general death-rate than about 14 to 15 even into my ear the tempting offer of this presidential chair, and under the most favourable hygienic conditions reasonably attainable. So that by the time we have gone as far in as this day drew nearer they also came nearer to my mind. The responsibility of an introductory orator on such ani reducing the death-rate as we have come in the past quarter occasion as this is much increased by the fact that hygiene of a century we shall have reached the ultimate minimum. has now become fashionable, and that most people nowadays but it will certainly not be in another quarter of a century.’’ know at all events the elementary principles on which it More evidence can be found in the Repcrts of the Local works. All great subjects like this, and more especially Government Board, where, under the skilful guidance of Sir those which involve some dislocation of antiquarian super- John Simon and Sir George Buchanan and Sir Richard stition and domestic prejudice, must pass through a variety Thorne Thorne, some of the most acute minds in England
FARQUHARSON, M.D. EDIN,, LOND., ABERD.,
of stages or cycles, and varying waves of interest beat on the mental shore. First, we have the stage of ridicule, a difficult one to get over, but which we have at last successfully surmounted. Next we find that when the general public recognise that we are in earnest the stage of active opposition sets in, and vested interests and pig-headed ignorance, and the selfcomplacent argument of ’’why not let it alone," are marshalled in warlike array againt the new broom which tries to sweep the Augean stable clean. But we have now nearly outlived all this ; ventilators are no longer stuffed up, the working classes, no less than their employers, are beginning to be connoisseurs in the quality of their atmospheric conditions, enjoy a good wash as much as a university graduate, and are fully prepared to appreciate the advantages of hygienic house accommodation at other people’s expense. Associations like our own, and the National Health Society, and the St. John Ambulance Association, and able and zealous missionaries, have not spoken and written in vain, and now we live in an age of sanitary progress, where the little knowledge, which is safe not dangerous, persuades its possessor of its scanty amount, and tells him where to go to make good his deficiencies. For instance, no properly instructed person in these enlightened days would take a house without a thorough inspection of, and report on, its sanitary arrangements ; water analysis and food analysis keep us fairly free from adulteration, and most of us know pretty well, or at all events know how to get the information, as to the amount of help given us by the law in keeping our health fairly sound. For the conclusion is inevitable that the race is to the swift and the battle to the strong, and that unless we are well equipped physically for the contest we will be outpaced and shoved aside, and laid on the shelf. The wellworn quotation from Herbert Spencer sums up the whole case: ’’ The first requisite of life is to be a good animal, and to be a nation of good animals is the first condition of national prosperity." [Dr. FarquhaMon here regretted the monotony of modern labour, which, he suggested, is largely due to the minute subdivision of employments. He then made some reference to recent advances in physiological knowledge and continued : Some will probably ask this question : " It is all very fine talking about fashion and popularity and progress ; can you show any tangible results7 Is the human race any longer at present than in the good old lived, or better, or happier " days of pre-hygiene7" Now if any lingering shade of romantic leaning towards the life conditions of medimval or post-mediseval England still haunts your mind, you may
been unravelling abstruse sanitary problems and tracking out from clues invisible to the ordinary eye sanitary defects which were poisoning districts and destroying human life. But these are scattered and not always accessible, and I strongly commend to yonr attention two capital little books which strike the have
nail very directly on the head. The first of these is by your respected townsman, Mr. Pridgin Teale, who, in the intervals of a brilliant and successful surgical career, has found time to preach the doctrine that a nation’s health is a nation’s wealth, and to furnish a series of object lessons of the most clear and practical if alarming kind. The second is by our esteemed friend and associate, Professor Corfield, one of the pioneers of sanitary progress, and it is called I I Disease and Defective House Sanitation." It consists of two short lectures, but it is crammed with suggestive matter, and he enumerates the following diseases as directly caused by the defects included in his title-sore throats, diphtheria, scarlet fever, blood poisoning, puerperel fever, pneumonia, diarrhoea, enteric fever, and general malaise. All these have resulted from badly-connected ventilating pipes, badlytrapped waste pipes, defective drains, split soil pipes, foul pan water closets, and very frequently from escapes of gas, a cause more especially of sore throats, new to me, I must confess. May I give you one other illustration ? I think it was in 1884 or 1885 that serious complaints began to be made about the drainage and ventilation of the Hriuse of Commons. A committee was appointed under the presidency of Sir Henry Roscoe to examine the whole question, and we had to tell the legislators on the basis of a very important investigation by the late Professor Carnelley, that they were actually breathing sewer gas, and that the sooner they put their house in order the better for themselves and the country. So &10,OCO were voted nem. con., Shone’s ejector cut us off from the main sewer, and I make so bold as to claim for this sanitary operation national importance in improving the health and temper of our senators and enhancing the quality of their work. The benefits conferred by modern civilisation are, however, accompanied by some drawbacks. In the seventeenth century the death-rate was said to be 7 per cent. ; it is now about 18 per 1000, the advantage being mainly between the ages of five and thirty-five, and our chances of reaching this maximum period of longevity are distinctly increased. The majority of us, however, are older than that, and we want to know what is to become of us, and vital statistics do not give us much comfort, for after middle life, when we stand on the tableland and look over the edge, before stepping downhill, we do not live longer and we break down sooner. Why is this ? One evil of civilisation is the tendency lay the ghost by diligent perusal of Simon’s "Englishto crowd into big towns, where hou:es are dear and often bad, Sanitary Institutions" and the "Health of Nations," in whichthe air is usually poisoned with smoke, and, as Dr. Poore has the work of Edwin Chadwick is reviewed by Richardson-well shown in his most interesting work on Rural Hygiene, No. 3864.
M
.
DR.
702
FARQUHARSON, M.P., ON THE RESULTS OF SANITATION.
are serious daggers connected with defects in our rising generation, must convince you that this increase of complicated arrangements for drainage and sewage disposal. pallor is only too real. This is depressing, but it has its bright side. No doubt it is [Dr. Farquharson here remarked that he wished to say a dangerous to be placed within easy reach of receptacles of word in favour of sexual selection, commending the Vicar of foul air and sewer gas, as we all are, and necessarily must Wakefield for choosing his wife as she chose her weddingbe, under the system of water-borne sewage common to our dress-" on account other wearing qualities." With respect great towns ; but the greater the risk the greater should be to vaccination, he suggested that the age should be raised so the care exerted to keep it off. It would be a good thing if as to avoid the teething and eruptive periods, and that every workmen, and more especially those who manufacture the infant should have four good marks, the operator being ’complicated structures which modern hygiene requires, preferably a public vaccinator. He then referred to school should not only feel but carry into practice the life and house accommodation, and concluded as follows :] Each of us is individually responsible to ourselves and to full sense of responsibility resting on them in connexion with their tlaje; and that they should be taught how a others for our scheme of sanitation, and then we pass into bit of scamped work-a leaking cesspool, or a badly placed the hands of local authorities, who are doing good work, who or constructed drain, or a badly-socketed soil-pipe, or generally give you value for your money, and whose beneficial any derangement in the mechanical contrivances designed to operations I hope you duly appreciate. But over them stands keep out the sewer gas which is always trying to force its the House of Commons, and I am glad of this opportunity of way in.-may destroy human life just as effectually as poison saying that I have a very poor opinion of that legislative ,or the knife. This is why I have persistently supported the assembly in its dealings with public health. Both sides are Plumbers’ Registration Bill in and out of Parliament, being bad, but that to which I belong is, I think; the worst, for - convinced, as I am, that without establishing a monopoly, or suspicion of scientific methods atld of progressive sanitation - doing any real harm to any vested interest, the establish- is deep-rooted in certain Radical quarters, and abstract views ment of a defined curriculum, followed by registration and of personal liberty and distrust of the so-called tyranny of - examination, will raise the status and character of the medical men sway a kind of plausible sentiment which is workman, and by increasing his sense of responsibility and usually irresistible in its paralysing effects on hygienic legis,his interest in his work will not only confer benefits on him, lation. As a Member lately remarked with refreshing but also on those by whom he is employed. frankness when we were considering the Public Health The next point I wish to refer to is the curious way in (Scotland) Bill, " When I see the doctors on both sides vhich, when we have abolished one set of diseases, another of the House my instinct tells me that something is wrong band of successors sometimes springs up hydra-headed to and I will vote against the amendment." Under such conplague poor humanity. I suppose it must be so, for we poor ditions the private Member can do nothing, beyond being mortals have not put on immortality, but must shuffle off usefully employed in stimulating public opinion in and outour mortal coils, in some swift or lingering way, so side the House, until particular problems reach the acute that if we are prevented from dying from one disease we stage and are taken under Government protection. In must of sad neoessity die from another, and diminution of conclusion, let me reiterate the strong wish I have already one death-rate involves increase somewhere else. Enteric publicly expressed in favour of a Ministry of Health, a fever remains pretty stationary in the last ten years, department of the State which would collect into one but a drop from 309 in 1876 to 175 in 1895 does credit to harmonious whole the scattered threads of sanitary legisla.our sanitary administration, and phthisis has gone down tion, which would focus all health questions, and admission from 26,443 in 1876 to 22,775 in 1894. Small-pox has taken to which would be an object of honourable ambition to the a satisfactory dip downward from 2405 in 1876 to 33 in 1895. best scientific talent of the day. Measles, a arlet fever, and whooping cough have killed fewer than formerly, but, per contra, diphtheria has largely
there
increased, and that is
no doubt due, as Sir R. Thorne Thorne which I have received from communication private jhim, " to the ever-growing facilities for personal infection, and other similar points have followed on the success in herding our child population into elementary schools at the ’very age at which they are most susceptible to this disease." 40 umber diseases have also increased, and the point I wish to make is this, that they are mostly diseases connected with the nervous system, and that Crichton Browne was probably right in hia opinion that not merely the nervous temperament, but the neurotic diathesis is on the increase among us. To begin with, it is a mournful but I fear an undoubted fact that more people go mad than formerly. I have not by me any .4r,atibtics to prove this beyond the report of the Registrargeneral for 1895, but there I find under the heading of insanity and general paralysis-a disease which was seldom ,heard of in former years-3620 deaths in 1895, against 933 rin 1876. Angina pectoris, a typically neurotic disorder, has increased ’within the same period from 397 to 696; valvular disease of the heart, which has some practical sympathy with the ,neurotic diathesis, has gone up from 274 to 10,072 ; whilst Bright’s disease, the frequent causation of which by sudden mental shock has been demonstrated by Clifford Albutt, hows an alarming rate of increase from 4100 to 8351. Cancer has nearly doubled since 1876, and diabetes reached its highest point in 1895, accounting for 2265 deaths over 10 in 1876, whilst most of us know only too well the firm grip taken by influenza on the British constitution, and the way in which in more recent years it has attacked the i mervous system. There seems no doubt, therefore, about ’the fact that we are now in the midst of a neurotic age, .and, moreover, an age which is essentially anaemic. How many young girls in any rank of life escape passing through .a blocdleas stage, which suggests a strike or a lock-out among their red corpuscles, and a consequent stagnation of their vital processes ?7 Let ua take another glance at the Registrar-General’s report, where we will see that deaths from arivemia, chlorosis, and lC1JCocythaemia have advanced from 576 in 1876 to 1883 in 1895, and this, together with a glance at the cheeks of the
saya in
ABSTRACT OF A
a
I
Post-Graduate Address ON
THE MEDICAL ASPECTS APPENDICITIS. Delivered at the West London
OF
Hospital on Feb. 3rd, 1897,
BY DONALD W. C. HOOD, M.D.CANTAB., F.R.C.P. LOND., SENIOR PHYSICIAN TO THE WEST LONDON HOSPITAL.
GENTLEMEN,-That form of local peritonitis so frequently right iliac fossa and known under the various names, typhlitis, perityphlitis, or appendicitis, presents met with in the
features of interest both to the physician and the surgeon. I have thought that it might be useful on the present occasion to discuss the disease from its medical aspects alone, for while fully acknowledging the brilliant achievements of surgery in connexion with abdominal diseases, I have no hesitation in affirming that we are in danger of looking upon the treatment of appendicitis from a too exclusive point of view, and I fear that many, by forgetfulness of the good results which follow a purely medical course of treatment, lose the valuable opportunit:es which only come to those who see the disease at the earliest
numerous
onset. In considering the diagnosis of appendicitis we must first glance at the forms or varieties under which the disease is met with, and we must consider briefly those affections with which it is liable to be confounded. We meet with appendicitis in one of two principal forms-namely, (1) an acute