INCREASE OF CONSUMPTION. 39 



In the face of an evil of such growing magnitude, there cannot, 

 I affirm, be any remedy short of its prevention. In the mean- 

 time, however, those who, in increasing numbers, are seeking our 

 help must be cared for. The difficulty experienced, in doing this, 

 is only really known to medical men, and more so to those 

 connected with such an Hospital as our Eoyal Infirmary. Drawn 

 to it, no doubt, by its fame, and to Edinburgh by the known 

 benevolence of its citizens, we have to encounter the task daily of 

 sending away crowds who cannot be admitted to its wards. You 

 are, I daresay, aware that it is barely within the scope of that 

 Institution to receive cases of the kind, partly, because it is a 

 serious disadvantage to the other patients on account of 

 the troublesome night cough with which such sufferers are 

 afflicted. Nevertheless, be it told, alike to the credit of 

 the Managers and of the Medical Officers, that there is not a 

 ward which has not its full complement of them ; but, I need not 

 say that this is a most undesirable state of matters. Let me here 

 plead guilty to having gone a little aside from the main drift 

 of my theme to speak of this matter. I have taken the oppor- 

 tunity of doing so that I might direct attention to, and perhaps 

 awaken an interest in, the subject. Whilst London has its half 

 dozen hospitals for consumptive cases, and other considerable 

 cities are not without some provision for them, Edinburgh, which 

 owns a great medical school, is, it must be confessed, in the 

 position of not having a single bed set apart for so necessary an 

 object ! It would be a great and truly useful work to devote an 

 edifice to so benevolent a purpose, and to the good Samaritan 

 who should do so, there would be the reward I say, not of the 

 approbation of his fellows, or the thanks of the medical profession, 

 or the lasting gratitude of those who would reap its benefits but 

 the enviable consciousness of a deed that would perpetuate the 

 relief of a sadly numerous and interesting class of sufferers. 



We have now to speak of 



THE MEANS OF PREVENTING THE EFFECTS OF 

 UNHEALTHY OCCUPATIONS. 



You will have observed that, in the case of almost every occupa- 

 tion I have spoken of, the injury is inflicted through the agency 



