Flint's Letters from America, 1818-1820Flint, James, active 19th century
History
Flint's Letters from America, 1818-1820
Flint, James, active 19th century
Ohio River Valley -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
_August 7._ The general aspect of the city is more pleasant, and a
freer circulation of air is felt than in New York; of course the
natural inference is that Philadelphia must be the more salubrious of
the two. Dr. Mease, of the American Philosophical Society, has deduced
the same conclusion from the bills of mortality.[20] The daily average
of deaths being 5²⁄₃ in this place, and 6¹⁄₃ at New York. At the
time this computation was made, the population of Philadelphia was the
greater of the two, consequently something more is to be allowed in
favour of the relative healthfulness of Philadelphia.
The doctor has also compared the mortalities of Philadelphia and
Liverpool, and it appears that the deaths in the former city are, to
those in the latter, as 33 to 50. The comparison was made between the
number of deaths in 1810 for Philadelphia, and on another year for
Liverpool. This must have been occasioned from a want of data applying
to the same year in both places. My very short acquaintance with the
doctor gives me the utmost confidence in his candour, and in the
accuracy of his calculations.
{30} It is not to be kept out of view, that the mortality in
Philadelphia is considerably greater in summer than in winter, the
deaths in August, for example, may be fairly stated at twice the number
in December. This fact, not to mention the epidemical diseases with
which Philadelphia is sometimes visited, must give a decided preference
to Liverpool.
The religious sects of Philadelphia are eighteen in number; they
have thirty-four places of worship. The whole may be exhibited thus:
Swedish, three churches; Quakers, three; Free Quakers, one; Episcopal,
three; Baptist, one; Presbyterian, two; Catholic, four; German
Lutheran, two; German Calvinist, two; Associate Reformed Church, one;
Moravians, one; Associate Church, (Antiburghers,) one; Presbyterian
Covenanters, one; Methodists, four, (two for whites and two for
blacks;) Universalists, one; Unitarians, one; Independents, one; Jewish
Synagogues, two.
There are four state law courts in the city; four Banks, and eleven
Insurance offices.
The other institutions would be too tedious to enumerate separately,
probably the following includes most of them. Thirteen charitable
institutions, eight free school societies, three patriotic societies,
about twenty mutual benefit societies, five associations for the relief
of foreigners and their descendants, seven literary institutions,
three libraries, the American Philosophical Society,[21] the Society
of Artists, the Pennsylvanian Academy of Fine Arts, and a museum of
natural history.[22]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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