TRAVELLING INVALIDS.
We cannot refrain from stating our belief, and this on the authority of intelligent physicians, as well as from personal observation, that much mischief is done by committing invalids to long and precarious journeys, for the sake of doubtful benefits. We have ourselves seen consumptive patients hurried along, through all the discomforts of bad roads, bad inns, and indifferent diet, to places, where certain partial advantages of climate poorly compensated for the loss of the many benefits which home and domestic care can best afford. We have seen such invalids lodged in cold, half-furnished houses, and shivering under blasts of wind from the Alps or Apennines, who might more happily have been sheltered in the vales of Somerset or Devon. On this topic, however, we refrain from saying more—further than to state our belief, that much misapprehension generally prevails, as to the comparative healthiness of England, and other parts of Europe. Certain phrases respecting climate have obtained fashionable currency amongst us, which greatly mislead the judgment as to facts. The accurate statistical tables, now extended to the greater part of Europe, furnish more secure grounds of opinion; and from these we derive the knowledge, that there is no one country in Europe where the average proportion of mortality is so small as in England. Some few details on this subject we subjoin,—tempted to do so by the common errors prevailing in relation to it.
The proportion of deaths to the population is nearly one-third less in England than in France. Comparing the two capitals, the average mortality of London is about one-fifth less than that of Paris. What may appear a more singular statement, the proportion of deaths in London, a vast and luxurious metropolis, differs only by a small fraction from that of the whole of France; and is considerably less than the average of those Mediterranean shores which are especially frequented by invalids for the sake of health. In Italy, the proportion of deaths is a full third greater than in England; and even in Switzerland and Sweden, though the difference be less, it is still in favour of our own country.—Q. Rev.