Thomas Beddoes to John Clark, 11 June [1802]
Dear Doctor,
It gives me very sincere pleasure to find that you are endeavouring to establish a House of Recovery at Newcastle. Every new example must have its effect in rendering these useful institutions general.
The only objection I have heard, is, that the collection of a number of persons may concentrate and accumulate the contagion, and cause it to spread more, – at least in the vicinity of the fever-wards. Such an idea is very excusable in any person who has had no particular motive or opportunity to look into the subject: But the facts which you have laid together, and of which the authenticity is above all suspicion, must dissipate every such apprehension, where there is a disposition to abide by facts. I can conceive people with an imagination so intractable, as to be incapable of listening to the decisions of experience in a question which so closely touches personal security. Such people are haunted with so wild a terror of febrile contagion, that the idea of studying its laws, with a view to stop its propagation, must appear to them a chimerical and desperate, if not almost an impious undertaking. I know not by what charm you will tranquillise them, while you put them clearly in possession of what has been done in this line.
Every person must know what wretched managers the generality of the poor are, in good health, and under ordinary circumstances: Every medical man must have seen how much the distress of sickness adds to their helplessness. The relations of a poor person affected by contagious fever, have often reminded me of children heedlessly leaving firebrands in contact with combustible materials, or tossing them about till they had set the house on fire. I look upon it that a House of Recovery, with a hundred patients, where the best ascertained means of prevention are vigilantly practised, stands an infinitely less chance of disseminating the disease than one single infected poor family. I wonder what the number of instances has been, in which, when one member of a poor family has had a contagious disease, others have failed to catch it. I can assure you I saw numbers who had been ill at Bristol, during the last epidemic: I put the question; and I did not find any father, mother, son, or daughter who had had the fever singly. Then how did the first who fell down get his disorder: By an idle call upon some neighbor – by coming in contact with some article of dress or use which had been applied to the sick body – by the neglect of ventilation – of plunging suspicious matters into water – and of those precautions which give security to the attendants in a well-regulated House of Recovery.
Clifton is as well-situated as a place can be for preserving its inhabitants from contagion: Yet the Bristol fever spread here, as I saw, and proved fatal in some instances, as I was credibly informed. – In cases that fell under my own observation, it began with the servants of opulent families. These servants had had communication with sick houses in the neighbouring city. Now every sick person, removed to a fever-ward, cuts off from servants such an opportunity of carrying disease and death into their masters’ houses. Where the fever prevails in any large place without a House of Recovery, you may safely predict that the infection shall be conveyed in this manner into many houses where it would never otherwise come.
I have traced the continuation of fever from imprudent intercourse, through a succession of years. Others have done the same.
There is therefore no point of view, in which you will not perceive security to all classes in a Fever-house.
What extraneous objections may lie against it in any place, I cannot anticipate. Such objections are often the pretexts of indolence, and sometimes of personal aversion. If one of my neighbours could not bear that I should be the instrument of public good, he would not avow this motive but he would not want the ingenuity to invent some other, which he could avow.
The cost attending a scheme of this sort, is, no doubt, an evil: But after proving the efficacy of the scheme, you can only put it to the wealthy, – Will you be at expense in insuring your ships, your houses, warehouses; and will you refuse to open your purse in behalf of yourself, your wife, your sons, and daughters?
With anxiety to learn the result of your efforts, and the most sincere wishes that you may be able to carry your point,
I am,
Dear Doctor,
Yours sincerely
Thomas Beddoes
Published: John Clark, A Collection of Papers, Intended to Promote an Institution for the Cure and Prevention of Infectious Diseases in Newcastle and Other Populous Towns (Newcastle, 1802), pp. 83–86