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10
It will doubtless have been observed that during the greater part of last year
I have affixed to the notice board at the vestibule of the Hall, a daily record of
meteorological observations, taken at nine o'clock every morning in my own garden
from instruments, the accuracy of which has been tested at Greenwich. This record
is not posted up merely to satisfy curiosity, although I am happy to think that even
thus it may have gratified some of those who are pleased to consult it; and may lead
to the cultivation amongst such of a taste for a very interesting and nationally
important science. My chief object has been to record and announce events which
occurring day by day, and week by week, have an influence upon public health which
it is difficult to exaggerate. Such observations as these enable me, and will enable
you when you read them in the light of those truths which I have been lately
enunciating, and am still engaged in bringing out, to predict, within the limitations,
imposed by certain contingences, and with the necessary allowance for unavoidable
ignorance and error, the probable fluctuations of sickness in our population.
The points to which my observations are confined are such as experience has
shown me are those which can at present alone be made much use of with this object,
I mean the fluctuations of atmospheric temperature, the range of temperature
between the lowest at night and the highest during the day; the amount of moisturo
held in suspension in the air, and the amount and frequency of rain-fall. This is a
subject which I have been steadily engaged in studying almost from the first year of
my appointment to my present office, although it was not until lately that I felt
myself in a position to write or speak upon it with any degree of authority. Some
diagrams which have been suspended in the Library illustrate the following facts,
which are more fully set forth numerically in the pamphlet upon the "Influence of
weather upon sickness," which I have also had the pleasure to place upon your shelves.
1. That an increase of atmospheric temperature is normally associated with an
increase of general sickness.
2. That a decrease of atmospheric temperature is normally associated with a
diminution of general sickness.
3. That for the most part the increase or decrease of sickness is proportional
in amount to the extent to which the atmospheric temperature rises or falls.
4. That it is an error to suppose (as is popularly held) that sudden changes in
temperature are (as a rule) damaging to public health. A sudden change from cold
to hot weather is indeed very damaging; but a sudden change from hot to cold is
one of the most favourable circumstances that can occur when sickness is regarded
broadly as respects a large population.
5. That, remarkably enough, these influences are most marked in the directions
I have mentioned in the colder seasons of the year, and more certain in the winter
than in the summer.