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11
With this opinion, it is almost needless to say, your Health
Officers entirely agree.*
Sanitation, &c.—From each of the Local Summaries,
and from Table VI, Appendix, may be gathered all the
information that can be supplied upon this subject without
entering largely into the same details as will be found
in such summaries, and in the Surveyors' reports of the
* Many letters have lately appeared in the Medical Journals upon the subject
of Coroners' Inquests, and upon the practice of dispensing with medical
evidence and post mortem examinations. The following communication,
taken from The Lancet of a recent date, affords an instance of a very general
complaint amongst medical men.
"To the Editor of The Lancet."
« Sir,
Now and again I read in your columns critiques on Coroners' Inquests. A
case occurred)near this town recently, which I think illustrates the need of criticism.
I was in Stewkley (Bucks) on Monday, about five miles from here, when, hearing
that a man had just died suddenly, I at once drove to the house, examined the body
externally, and left word with the relatives to convey information of my visit to the
authorities, as 1 imagined that a post mortem examination would be required to
elicit evidence wherewith to satisfy the jury. However, on visiting the place today,
I learn that an inquest has been held without any medical evidence whatever,
and that the jury arrived at the somewhat illogical verdict of 'died by the visitation
ot God, through drink.'
"Tours very truly,
"Leighton Buzzard, (Beds.) I. A. Hedges."
April 30tb, 1873."
Another correspondent of The Lancet relates a case of a medical man being
summoned to see a farm labourer, who was supposed to have fallen lrom a
stack at a village in Derbyshire. The man died, but the surgeon was not
asked to attend the inquest. The jury, however, arrived at the verdict of
" died from Heart Disease !" " How in the world," writes this gentleman,
" a dozen men, the majority farmers, could so soon find out the disease of the
heart, is a wonder to meand he concludes his letter by hinting at a very
different cause for the death than the one conjectured.
There is even a third letter in the same number of this journal detailing
the fact of two deaths taking place in Cumberland, under unusual circumstances,
without an inquest in either case ! Seeing, then, the frequency with
which the causes of death are thus conjectured by persons wholly incom; etent
to form opinions upon such subjects, it cannot be wondered at that the Medical
Profession should take the matter up rather warmly; at all events Dr. Farr,
of the Registrar General's Department, was fully justified in the remark he
made a few years since, that " the Coroner's Court is less effective than it
might become in deterring evil doers from the commission of dreadful crimes."