For Injury.
| Cases. | Deaths. | Mortality. per cent. | |
| Thigh | 313 | 80 | 25.5 |
| Leg | 409 | 57 | 13.4 |
| Arm | 344 | 14 | 4.0 |
| Forearm | 313 | 2 | 0.6 |
For Disease.
| Cases. | Deaths. | Mortality. per cent. | |
| Thigh | 356 | 43 | 12.0 |
| Leg | 209 | 25 | 12.0 |
| Arm | 89 | 5 | 5.6 |
| Forearm | 60 | 0 | — |
These statistics were accompanied by an exhaustive detailed examination and explanation; every possible point of attack was considered and protected. “I doubt not,” he said, “that the segregation of the sick from the sick—every diseased man being a focus of more or less danger to the diseased around him—is a principle of no small moment and value.” He attributed the comparative brilliancy of these statistical results to the isolation of the patients only; he endeavoured to show that the operations were often performed amidst dirty and squalid surroundings, on dirty and squalid persons. He did not attribute sufficient importance to the fact urged by many of his correspondents, who supported his general contentions almost to a man out of their own experience, that where fresh air, ventilation, and cleanliness prevailed, the results were always the most satisfactory.
The next step was to take hospital statistics of 182 similar operations, and the general result appears in the table on [page 183].
This testimony to the truth of Simpson’s opinion was more pronounced than even he himself had anticipated. “Shall this pitiless and deliberate sacrifice of human life to conditions which are more or less preventable be continued, or arrested? Do not these terrible figures plead eloquently and clamantly for a revision and reform of our existing hospital system?” This was his cry until at length breath failed him. The opposition was not strong, but the support was weak. Although there was much criticism, his conclusions were scarcely called in question at all; trifling holes were picked in his statistics, but his contentions were universally acknowledged to be correct; a few reformers only, persuaded as he was of the evils of hospitalism and working at the subject, lent him their advocacy. But he alone stood unperturbed at the extent of the evils and the magnitude of the change which he proposed in order to uproot them; death laid him low as he stood, but not before he had modified his proposals by suggesting that existing hospitals might be reconstructed, and new hospitals built on the now almost universally adopted pavilion system on which the new Edinburgh Royal Infirmary was one of the first to be built.
| HOSPITAL. | FOR INJURY. | FOR DISEASE. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Thigh. | Leg. | Arm. | Forearm. | Thigh. | Leg. | Arm. | Forearm. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cases | Deaths | Cases | Deaths | Cases | Deaths | Cases | Deaths | Cases | Deaths | Cases | Deaths | Cases | Deaths | Cases | Deaths | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Edinburgh Infirmary | 65 | 48 | 58 | 29 | 21 | 12 | 39 | 5 | 134 | 48 | 28 | 9 | 7 | 3 | 19 | 7 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Glasgow Infirmary | 100 | 60 | 93 | 50 | 101 | 38 | 66 | 9 | 177 | 68 | 82 | 27 | 23 | 6 | 19 | 1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Nine London Hospitals | 139 | 88 | 179 | 102 | 97 | 33 | 64 | 11 | 320 | 123 | 173 | 53 | 48 | 13 | 37 | 7 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Total | 304 | 196 | 330 | 181 | 219 | 88 | 169 | 25 | 631 | 239 | 283 | 89 | 78 | 22 | 75 | 15 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Mortality per cent. | 64.4 | 54.8 | 40.1 | 14.8 | 37.8 | 31.4 | 28.2 | 2.O | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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