[4]. In the course of some inquiries which I made with Professor Owen, when examining a slaughterman as to the effects of the effluvia of animal remains on himself and family, some other facts were elicited illustrative of the effects of such effluvia on still more delicate life. The man had lived in Bear-yard, near Clare-market, which was exposed to the combined effluvia from a slaughter-house and a tripe factory. He was a bird-fancier, but he found that he could not rear his birds in this place. He had known a bird fresh caught in summer-time die there in a week. He particularly noted as having a fatal influence on the birds, the stench raised by boiling down the fat from the tripe offal. He said, “You may hang the cage out of the garret window in any house round Bear-yard, and if it be a fresh bird, it will be dead in a week.” He had previously lived for a time in the same neighbourhood in a room over a crowded burial-ground in Portugal-street; at times in the morning he had seen a mist rise from the ground, and the smell was offensive. That place was equally fatal to his birds. He had removed to another dwelling in Vere-street, Clare-market, which is beyond the smells from those particular places, and he was now enabled to keep his birds. In town, however, the ordinary singing-birds did not, usually, live more than about 18 months; in cages in the country, such birds were known to live as long as nine years or more on the same food. When he particularly wished to preserve a pet bird, he sent it for a time into the country; and by repeating this removal he preserved them much longer. The fact of the pernicious effect of offensive smells on the small graminivorous birds, and the short duration of their life in close rooms and districts, was attested by a bird-dealer. In respect to cattle, the slaughterman gave decided reasons for the conclusion, that whilst in the slaughter-house they lost their appetites and refused food from the effect of the effluvium of the place, and not, as was popularly supposed, from any presentiment of their impending fate. Vide General Sanitary Report, p. 103, note, and p. 106.
[5]. On the evidence of individual cases the innocuousness of many poisons and diseases might be proved. Individuals are sometimes found to resist inoculation. It is a singular, and as yet unexplained fact, that centenarians are often found in the greatest proportion in times and places where the average duration of life of the whole population is very low. It has been shown from an accurate registration of centuries in Geneva, that as the average duration of life amongst the whole community advanced, the proportion of extreme cases of centenarians diminished. According to the bills of mortality there were nearly three times as many centenarians in London a century ago than at present. Out of 141,720 deaths within the bills of mortality during the five years ended 1742, the deaths of 58 persons alone of 100 years and upwards of age are recorded; whilst out of 139,876 deaths which occurred in the metropolis as returned by the registrar-general, during the three years which ended 30th June, 1841, only 22 deaths of 100 years of age and upwards are recorded. The average age of death of all who died was then 24 years; it is now, judging from an enumeration made from the returns of 1839, about 27 years; and there appears to have been a considerable improvement in all periods of life up to 90 years.
[6]. Vide Appendix of the district returns of the Mortuary Registration.
[7]. In the medical profession examples are not rare of the attainment of extreme old age; yet as a class they bear the visible marks of health below the average. The registration of one year may be an imperfect index; but the mortuary registration for the year 1839 having been examined, to ascertain what was the average age of death of persons of the three professions, it appears that the average age of the clergymen who died in London during that year was 59, of the legal profession 50, and of the medical profession 45. Only one medical student was included in the registration: had the deaths of those who died in their noviciate been included, the average age of death of the medical profession would have been much lower.
[8]. An instance in exception of a barber having caught fever is subsequently stated.
[9]. Two days in the week the London Fever Hospital is open to the friends of the patients, who often spend a considerable time in the wards, sometimes sitting on the beds of the sick; yet these visitors never take fever themselves, nor are they ever known to convey it by their clothes to persons out of the hospital. In like manner the persons employed to convey the clothes of the fever-patients from the wards of the hospital do not take fever, nor is there any evidence whatever that typhus fever is, or can be, propagated merely by the clothes; yet it is remarkable that the laundresses who wash the clothes, which often contain excrementitious matters from the patients, or from the dead, of an amount perceptible to the senses, rarely if ever escape fever. It is inferred, that in this case the poison is by the heat put in a state of vapour, which is inhaled, and being sufficient in quantity, produces the disease.
[10]. In the Appendix will be found further particulars and exemplifications of the facts, deducible from the mortuary registers, together with the returns from the several registration districts in the metropolis, of which the above is a summary.
[11]. Vide Appendix.—Paper on the Mortuary Returns.
[12]. Recently, April the 4th, at the Liverpool assizes, a woman named Eccles was convicted of the murder of one child, and was under the charge of poisoning two others, with arsenic. Immediately the murders were committed, it appeared she went to demand a stated allowance of burial money from the employers of the children.
[13]. Clarke v. Johnson, 11 Moore, 319.