Equally striking is the proof of the diminished violence of the prevalent causes of disease and death derived from the diminished mortality of children, the vital power of resistance being always comparatively weak in the human infant, and consequently, the agents that prove destructive to life exerting their main force on the new born, and on those of tender age. From mortuary tables, preserved with considerable accuracy at Geneva since the year 1566, it appears that at the time of the Reformation one-half of the children born died within the sixth year; in the seventeenth century, not till within the twelfth year; in the eighteenth century, not until the twenty-seventh year; consequently, in the space of about three centuries, the probability that a child born in Geneva would arrive at maturity has increased fivefold. In the present day, at Ostend, only half of the new-born children attain the age of thirty; whereas, in England, they attain the age of forty-five. No less remarkable is the progressive diminution of mortality among the sick of all ages. Hippocrates has left a statement, which has come down to our times, of the history and fate of forty-two cases of acute disease. Out of this number, thirty-seven were cases of continued fever; of these thirty-seven febrile cases twenty-one died, above half of the whole. The remaining five were cases of local inflammation, and of these four were fatal; thus, of the whole number of the sick (forty-two), twenty-five were lost. Now, even in the Fever Hospital of London, to which, for the most part, only the worst cases that occur in the metropolis are sent, and even of these many not until so late a period of the disease that all hope of recovery is extinct, the mortality ranges in different years from one in six to one in twelve; and for a period of ten consecutive years, it is no more than one in seven; while, in the Dublin Fever Hospital, where most of the cases are sent very early, the average mortality from 1804 to 1812 was one in twelve. At the Imperial Hospital at Petersburg, the average mortality for fourteen years, ending in 1817, was one in four and a half. In the Charité of Berlin, on an average of twenty years, from 1796 to 1817, it was one in six. At Dresden, it was one in seven; at Munich, it was one in nine, the lowest of any hospital of equal size in Germany. In the year 1685, the average mortality at St. Bartholomew's and St. Thomas's Hospitals was from one in seven to one in ten. During the ten years from 1773 to 1783, it decreased to one in fourteen. From 1803 to 1813, it was one in sixteen. The average for fifty years from 1764 to 1813, was one in fifteen. In the smaller towns, the mortality is still less. It is less in Edinburgh and Dublin than in London; while in the hospital at Bath during 1827, even among the physician's patients, the mortality was only one in twenty. In the German provincial towns, the diminution is still more remarkable. In the hospital at Gottingen, for