Reports Relating to the Sanitary Condition of the City of LondonSimon, John
History
Reports Relating to the Sanitary Condition of the City of London
Simon, John
Cemeteries -- England -- London; Mortality -- Statistics; Sanitation -- England -- London
The first column shows 391 deaths by fever; and of these, without
hesitation, I would speak as entirely preventable. Under favourable
sanitary conditions fever is unknown. The deaths arising from it befall
for the most part persons in the prime of life, whose premature removal,
in the midst of their vigour and usefulness, is not only a direct
weakening of society, but is also, in respect of orphanage and
widowhood, a frequent source to the public of indirect detriment and
expense.
In the second column, swelled by the epidemic visitation of 1849, you
will find 902 deaths referred to Asiatic Cholera, and to other kindred
diseases. Comparatively few cases of the kind have occurred since
Michaelmas, 1849; an overwhelming majority belonged to the summer
quarter then terminating, when the Metropolis generally was suffering
from the presence of Cholera. I have already had occasion to show you
that this frightful pestilence belongs only to localities which, by
their general epidemic mortality, have previously been stigmatised as
unhealthy; that, over districts otherwise healthy, it migrates without
striking a blow; that it may, therefore, with confidence be spoken of as
a disease proportionate to removable causes--in other words, as a
preventable disease.
I cannot pass over these two columns, without begging you to observe
what perhaps may be novel to you. If, instead of reckoning the
cholera-deaths as belonging solely to the one year in which they
happened, you reckon them as belonging to the whole term of years which
elapsed between the two visitations of the epidemic, and distribute them
equally over that period, so as to form an average--say for fifteen
years, you cannot fail to notice how largely, in the long run, the
destruction by fever (which is always here) surpasses the fatality of
that Eastern disease; so much so, that the average annual mortality by
the latter probably does not amount to half the fatality of the former.
Nor must it be lost sight of, that if the _deaths_ by typhus double in
number those produced by cholera, the list of _persons attacked_ by the
former disease, and thereby for a long while incapacitated and
suffering, is immeasurably beyond this proportion. Two or three times
the number of deaths by cholera would give you the number of seizures,
and enable you to estimate all the direct mischief caused by it; while,
in regard of typhus, probably for one death there are twenty cases of
protracted illness, tardy convalescence, and injured constitution. Not
only are the deaths double in number, but each of them indicates an
infinitely larger amount of sickness and suffering not immediately
productive of death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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