Page:The reports of the Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor (IA b21971961 0001).pdf/152

114 an act of philanthropy in a few individuals, is now supported by the good wishes and contribution of the greater part of the respectable inhabitants at Manchester. Other consequences have attended the extraordinary success of this institution:—viz. first, that the Board of Health does now receive patients in fevers to the House of Recovery, from beyond the districts for which it was first established; by which means the environs of the town are also cleared of the epidemic fever:—second, that the Infirmary also now receives a variety of patients, which they were obliged to refuse, when the Infirmary and town were oppressed by the enormous crowd of fever patients; whose claims seemed to supersede those of persons not afflicted with contagious diseases:—and thirdly, that, in the year 1796, there has been a decrease of near 400 in the bills of mortality at Manchester.

A Board of Health and a House of Recovery, upon the plan of that at