Joseph Rogers, M.D.: Reminiscences of a Workhouse Medical Officer

REMINISCENCES OF A WORKHOUSE MEDICAL OFFICER.


JOSEPH ROGERS, M.D.
EDITED, WITH A PREFACE
PROF. THOROLD ROGERS
London T. FISHER UNWIN 26 PATERNOSTER SQUARE MDCCCLXXXIX

The author of the brief narrative which I have edited, and have seen through the Press, passed away before the printing of his work was completed. What he wrote was composed under the presence of a mortal disease, the issue of which he clearly foresaw. But he was unwilling to quit life without leaving behind him some record of the evils with which he grappled, of the obstacles which he had to encounter, and of the changes which he strove to effect. He might indeed, and with the acquiescence of the profession which he honoured, have claimed the credit of those great reforms in the treatment of the sick poor, and in the status of his professional brethren, to which the labours of his life were directed; but he has preferred to give a narrative of his experiences, and to leave his reputation to the members of the great and beneficent calling which he followed, and to those among the public who were cognizant of his zeal and perseverance.
My late brother was the descendant of three generations of medical practitioners, who, from the first quarter of the eighteenth century, plied the art of tending and healing the sick down to the last quarter of the nineteenth, for his elder brother relinquished his practice only about ten or a dozen years ago. And this was in the same locality. But soon after my brother Joseph was qualified he went to London; and very speedily after he came to London he began the labour of his life—the reform, namely, of the medical relief accorded to the indigent poor. To this he surrendered the prospects of professional success and fortune—prospects which his professional abilities might have made certainties; for this he sacrificed popularity, health, and all that a vigorous constitution might have assured to him. He literally wore himself out by his labours.