Then fly that dang’rous town, ye swains, For fear ye shall endure A pain from some bright sparkling eye, Which Russell’s skill can’t cure. Dr. Russell died in 1759, aged 72 years, and was interred in the family vault at South Malling, on the 25th of December. He was the son of Mr. Nathaniel Russell, a surgeon and apothecary of Lewes, and clandestinely married the only daughter of Mr. William Kempe, of South Malling. After his marriage he studied at the University of Leyden, and received instruction under the learned Boerhaave. His death took place in London. Dr. A. Relhan was his worthy successor, inasmuch as he fully developed the causes of the salubrity of Brighton, the invaluable efficacy of sea-bathing, and the medical virtues of the chalybeate spring, at the Wick, now the property of Sir Francis Goldsmid. In his “Treatise on the Salubrity of the Town and Neighbourhood,” the Doctor writes:— The town, (June, 1761,) at present consists of six principal streets, many lanes, and some spaces surrounded with houses, called by the inhabitants squares. {221} The great plenty of flint stones on the shore and in the neighbouring cornfields, enabled them to build the walls of their houses with that material, when in their most impoverished state. At present they ornament the windows and doors with the admirable brick which they burn for their own use. The town improves daily, as the inhabitants, encouraged by the late great resort of company, seem disposed to expend the whole of what they acquire, in erecting new buildings, or improving the old ones. Here are two public rooms, the one convenient, the other not only so, but elegant, (the Old Ship), not excelled perhaps by any in England, that of York excepted. The _endemial_ or popular disorders of temperate people being the product of air and diet, the best proof of the healthfulness of the air of any place is deduced from the customary longevity of the inhabitants, and the rate of the Bills of Mortality. By the poor’s rate of this parish, there are 400 families in Brighton, each of these may be supposed to contain five souls (the common calculation in England is six in a family), and consequently the number of inhabitants, exclusive of those supported in the work-house, who, at a medium, amounted to 35, may be estimated at 2,000. In seven years, beginning with 1753, and 1752, the baptisms were 388, and the burials 227; so that the baptisms were annually to the deaths, nearly as five to three.