No. CXXXVII. An Extract from a further Account of the London Fever Institution. By THOMAS BERNARD, Esq. In the preceding year, ending the first of May, 1807, there were 93 fever patients admitted into the House of Recovery in Gray's Inn Lane.* During the months of August and September, 1806, febrile infection was more prevalent than it had been for some time in the metropolis. Above a third of the fever patients of the year were admitted in those two months: but in the majority of those cases, the symptoms were mild, and the termination favourable. After that period, however, and more especially in the early part of the present year 1807, fevers, tho less numerous, were more malignant; extending rapidly to all who were exposed This statement is taken from the annual Report of the Institution. to the influence of the contagion; and if neglected, or injudiciously treated in the commencement, proving very frequently fatal, notwithstanding every subsequent attention. By this cause, and by another that will be stated, the proportion of mortality upon the fever cases in the house, has been much increased. Eighty fever patients have been recovered and restored to their friends; and 14 have died in the preceding year. In one instance, a whole family, consisting of five persons, the father, mother and two children, and the nurse who had been sent by the parish to attend them, were admitted at the same time. The father and mother had been ill 10 or 11 days, and both died within two days after admission; the two children and the nurse, who had been recently attacked, recovered. It will probably occur to the reader, that if, instead of sending a parish nurse to the family, the parish officers had procured the two parents immediate admission to the House of Recovery, the lives of the father and mother, and the sickness and sufferings of the nurse and children, would have been saved, at the same time, the danger of the diffusion of febrile contagion in the parish would have been prevented, and (what is of less moment) a considerable part of the expense avoided. In another instance five young people in one family had been seized with fever. Two of them had died, before any application was made to the Institution of the others, two were admitted, and recovered. In a third instance, a family of six persons, a father, mother, and four children, all occupying one room in a dirty court in the Strand, were found labouring under fever at the same time, having been successively attacked within a few days of each other. The father and one child were in a state of convalescence : the mother and the three remaining children were received into the house, and restored to health. Cases, however, of contagious fever have not been confined to the habitations of the poor. Four of the patients in contagious fever, received during the preceding year, were the domestics of persons in a respectable rank of life; one of them a servant in a family in one of the great squares of the metropolis. Many other instances, in which contagious fever has found its way into the mansions of the opulent, have come within the notice of the Institution. Its utility therefore is not confined to the poor. For it not only contributes to stop the progress of contagion from its source; and, by cleansing and purifying the habitations of those who are most subject to it, to prevent its diffusion among the other classes of the community; but it also affords the higher ranks an open and comfortable asylum for their domestics, when attacked by contagious fever, and thus ensures the safety of the family and connections. The purification of the houses of the poor from febrile infection, by lime-washing and fumigation, is one of the most important benefits of the Fever Institution. This cannot |