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THE GULSTONIAN TRUST AND ITS FOUNDER: A HISTORICAL NOTE. Public Health and Poor Law.

THE following account of the founder of the Gulstonian LOCAL GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT Lectureship at the Royal College of Physicians has been forwarded to us from a reliable source. It contains some REPORTS OF MEDICAL OFFICERS OF HEALTH. of his in addition to those to be found particulars biography Rural the in Dr. Munk’s Roll of the of it District.-Estimating population up College Physicians, where, to the end of the first half of the year 1889, Mr. C. may be remarked, the name is spelt Goulston. Roberts calculates the general death-rate at 16 8 per 1000. Among the archives at the Heralds’ College there is, it The zymotic rate was high-namely, 3’4 per 1000- appears, safely stored away the funeral certificate of and, as will be remembered, diphtheria, which last year Dr. Theodore Gulston, M.D., dated 1632, and which sets caused 20 deaths, materially contributed to this end. The of is discussed in con- that he was son of epidemic diphtheria mainly forth the third William Gulston, D.D., nexion with the parishes of and Cowley, rector of Wymondham in Leicestershire ; that he married and apart from the question of infection contracted at Ellen, daughter of George Southerton (Governor of the school, it is evident that the prevalence of the disease Merchant Adventurers’ and Master of the Merchant Taylors’ was at least associated with, if not due to, a number of Company), by whom he had no issue, she dying in 1637. serious sanitary conditions. Attention seems, at the time In Wood’s "Athena Oxoniensis"l he is thus quaintly de- in question, to have been a good deal drawn to offensive scribed :-" Theodore Gulston received his first breath in circumstances about houses. A regular house-to house the county of Northampton, became probationer Fellow of visitation and record will now, it is to be hoped, secure Merton College in 1596. ’ Applyed his muse’ to the study both the knowledge and the remedy before the advent of of medicine (after he had been adorned with the magis- infectious disease. In there were 4 diphtheria terial degree), in the practice of which, having been initiated deaths. The joint hospital received 151 patients, of whom in these parts, he lived afterwards at Wymondham, where, 56 from the urban district and 27 from the as also in the neighbourhood, he became famous and much were suffering from diphtheria. Recommendations and frequented for his faculty. At length, taking the degrees action in such matters as unhealthy dwellings, v.’ater- of Physic in this (Oxford) University in 1610, was made a supply, &c., are evidently being pressed ; and the need for candidate of the College of Physicians at London, and the drainage works and the prevention of pollution in regard to year after Fellow thereof, and afterwards Censor, being at streams are put forward as urgent. Obviously this autho- that time in great esteem of his practice in the metropolitan rity has arrears of work to make good. city. He was an excellent Latinist and a noted Grecian, Exeter Urban District.-According to a report on the but better for theology, as it was observed by those that city sanatorium, it would appear that 41 patients were knew him. He hath published ’Versio Latina’ and under treatment during 1889, 8 of these coming from with- ’Paraphrasis in Aristotelis Rhetoricum,’ London, 1619 out the city. In all, 559 patients have been received since and 1623; also ’Aristotelis de Poeticâ,’ ’Liber Latinæ 1882, the death-rate over the eight years amounting to 6 2 Conversus,’ and ’Analytica Methodo,’ Illustratus London, per cent. of the admissions. To prevent needless personal 1623; also ’Versio variæ Lectiones’ and ’Annotationes communication with the establishment, the telephone has Critica in Opusculæ variæ Galeni,’ London, 1640, which been brought into use. last was published by his good friend, Thomas Gataker, Bac. of Div. Doctor Gulston ‘dyed’ at his house within the parish of St. Martyn’s by Ludgate, within the city of VITAL STATISTICS. London, 4th May, 1632, and was baried with great in the church to that solemnity belonging parish." HEALTH OF ENGLISH TOWNS. "By his will Dr. Theodore Gulston bequeathed £ 200 to pur- chase a rent-charge for the maintenance of an ’Anatomy Lec- IN twenty-eight of the largest English towns 5852 births ture’ in the College of Physicians at London, besides other and 3982 deaths were registered during the week ending donations, which were mostly, if not all, performed by his March 29 the. The annual rate of mortality in these towns, virtuous and religious widow Ellen Gulston. She, being which had declined from 26 6 to 21-7 per 1000 in the pre- possessed of the impropriate parsonage of Bard well, in ceding three weeks, further fell last week to 21’4; the Suffolk, did procure leave from the King (Charles I ) to rate was 18’5 in London and 23’8 in the twenty-seven annex the same to the vicarage, and to make it a pre- provincial towns. During the thirteen weeks of the sentative, which, being so done, she gave both so annexed quarter ending on Saturday last the death-rate in (for she had the donation of the vicarage before that time) the twenty-eight towns averaged 247 per 1000, and freely to St. John’s College, Oxon." exceeded by 1’7 the mean rate in the corresponding Dr. Theodore Gulston was third great-nephew to Thomas periods of the ten years 1880-89. The lowest rates in these Goldstone Gulston, Prior of Canterbury (the second Prior bowns last week were 17’9 in Nottingham, 18 5 in London, of that name2), and was uncle to William Gulston, D.D., 19 .1 in Bristol, and 19 4 in Bolton and in Birkenhead. The Bishop of Bristol, who died 1681 ; and Dr. Lancelot rates in the other towns ranged upwards to 28 ’7 in Brighton, Addison’s wife was his niece, Jane Gulston, mother to the 28.8 in Newcastle-upoii- Tyne, 29 3 in Sheffield, and 31’9 in famous poet and writer, Joseph Addison. Manchester. The deaths referred to the principal zymotic The present senior representative of Dr. Theodore iiseases, which had declined from 379 to 363 in the pre- Gulston (the founder of the well-known lectures) is Alan ceding four weeks, rose again last week to 424; they in- Stepney-Gulston of Derwydd, Esquire, in the county of cluded 164 from whooping-cough, 97 from measles, 64 from .carmarthen (lineally descended from the doctor’s elder scarlet fever, 46 from diphtheria, 33 from diarrhoea, 20 from brother John), through whose courtesy we have obtained "fever" (principally enteric), and not one from small-pox. the foregoing particulars. - The lowest death-rates from these diseases were recorded in and 1 Huddersfield, Leicester, Portsmouth, Birkenhead ; Vol. i., pp. 567-9, %c. while caused the rates in 2 In Somers’s "History of Canterbury" we learn that Thomas Gold- they highest Birmingham, stone Gulston, born in 1442, became prior of Canterbury Cathedral, and Preston, Brighton, and Salford. The greatest mortality was known as Prior Thomas Goldstone, "the second of that name." from measles occurred in Liverpool, Birmingham, and He was prior during twenty-four years, eight months, and sixteen days. from scarlet fever in and He died in Derby; Salford, Sheffield, 1517, and was buried in the cathedral (see his tomb there); and from in and he was the senior ecclesiastic sent in charge of the embassy appointed Preston; whooping-cough Wolverhamp- by Henry VII. (see "Letters and State Papers of the Reigns of ton, Liverpool, Oldham, Bolton, Salford, and Brighton. Richard III. and Henry VII.," vol. ii. &c., by Jas. Gairdner) to No marked excess of "fever" mortality was recorded arrange the terms of the peace which was concluded with the French n of towns. The 46 deaths from Charles A.D. and the Commissioners who any these great king, VIII., 1492, amongst in accompanied him was Sir Rice ap Thomas, K.G., who also was a direct iiphtheria in the twenty-eight towns included 30 London, ancestor of the Stepney-Gulstons of Derwydd, of the Stepneys of tin Salford, 4 in Hull, 2 in Manchester, and 2 in Sheffield. Llanelly, of the Dynevors of Dynevor, and of many other Carmarthen- No death from was in of the shire families. Some and relics of the renowned small-pox registered any interesting personal towns. Seven cases of this disease were Sir Rice ap Thomas are still preserved at Derwydd. twenty-eight