I may here observe, that the tables of sickness above referred to exhibit the very unsatisfactory footing on which the means of insurance against sickness and mortality within the reach of the labouring classes are now placed. An artisan of the condition of the East India Company’s labourers who insures for an allowance for sickness between the age of 61 and 66 years, which, according to the experience of his own class, would be a period of 10 days, would have to pay for 20 days, or 10 days in excess if he insured on the tables of the experience of benefit societies in Scotland, or 23 days in excess if he insured on tables founded on the experience collected by Mr. Finlaison. On the other hand, were a benefit society composed of members living under depressed circumstances, as in close courts or ill-drained districts, to adopt the table of the experience of the East India Company’s labourers, and to take members, living under the circumstances indicated by the Highland societies or Mr. Finlaison’s tables, the allowance on such a rate of insurance would be fraught with certain and speedy loss of the funds of the contributors. Having received contributions for an allowance on the chances of 10 days’ sickness, they would, upon insurances from the wynds of Edinburgh, have to pay for 40 days. The range of variation in the chances of life in different districts, such as have been shown in the returns from the different towns, exhibiting the mortality amongst the different classes, all present instances of the ruin to which benefit societies are exposed in acting upon tables calculated only for select classes, or on the mean experience of large classes, or of many classes differing widely in their circumstances. The probabilities of life at infancy for the whole population of Liverpool, as deduced from the actual ages of deaths of the whole population, would be 17 years; but on the Northampton tables of probability, payment would be required for the insurance of 25 years at infancy; for 38 years according to the Carlisle table; and if a male, for 37 years, according to the Swedish table. Yet such are the data and their applications on which large masses of savings and property are frequently invested and made dependent in various forms of insurance in benefit societies. The ruin of such societies is, I lament to say, by no means an unfrequent occurrence. The most painful spectacle that is presented in a painful and difficult service is that of a hardworking, industrious labourer, who has lived frugally and saved rigidly, who in his old age is stripped of his savings and reduced to destitution. One such example is enough to destroy the frugality of a whole village, and of all the labourers to whom it is presented. The necessity of a revision of all the tables which govern the subscriptions to friendly societies and the allowances from them, is strongly suggested by the evidence. It is to be lamented that, before giving tables of sickness or mortality to the members of benefit societies, many of the actuaries who have advised them have made no inquiries as to the condition of the neighbourhoods where the members reside or as to their general circumstances. The best advice to the labourers for the future will, however, be proved to be, that the most safe, economical, and efficient outlay as an insurance, will be in their own contributions, in rates or extra rent where needful for the execution of sanitary measures.

The further example adverted to as to the efficiency of preventive measures, is furnished by the naval medical service.

So dreadful was once the condition of the navy that, in the year 1726, when Admiral Hosier sailed with seven ships of the line to the West Indies, he buried his ships’ companies twice, and died himself of a broken heart. Amongst the pictures then presented, as in Anson’s Voyages, 1740–44, were those of deaths to the amount of eight or ten a-day in a moderate ship’s company; bodies sewn up in hammocks and washing about the decks, for want of strength and spirit on the part of the miserable survivors to cast them overboard. Dr. Johnson, in the year 1778, thus describes a sea life:—“As to the sailor, when you look down from the quarter-deck to the space below, you see the utmost extremity of human misery; such crowding, such filth, such stench!” “A ship is a prison, with the chance of being drowned,—it is worse, worse in every respect; worse air, worse food, worse company.”

Dr. Wilson, in his preface to the Medical Returns, observes that, within the limits of the South American command, the Centurion, exactly a century ago, lost in a few weeks 200 out of 400 men by scurvy. During the years from 1830 to 1836, the British squadron employed in South America, lost by diseases of every description only 115 out of 17,254 men. He observes—

“There is no reason to doubt that instead of every second man perishing miserably within a few weeks, the rate of mortality might have been as low as that exhibited in the South American Report, viz., one death annually by disease out of 150 men. Now there was nothing new nor mysterious in the pestilence either as to its origin or its essence: it was not a sudden climatorial influence which could not be resisted nor understood; it was a well-known affection presenting all the signs of utter prostration and pointing to pure debility as its source, the effects principally of scanty, unwholesome, unvarying diet and bad water—partly of inadequate attention to cleanliness, order, and ventilation, and the nearly total neglect of systematic attention to measures for amusing, cheering, and improving the mind with which resulting despondency often cooperated. The remedy therefore would appear to have been self-evident and at hand, not to the commanders of ships and fleets, but to the administration. Information on many points in the animal economy was certainly less exact than it is now, and vague unfounded notions prevailed of necessary relations existing between a sea-life and scurvy. Hence it may be concluded that ignorance rather than inhumanity was the reason why effectual measures were not long before adopted for the prevention of such terrible calamities.”

He observes further that—

In 1779 the proportion dying was 1 in 8 of the employed.

In 1811 the proportion dying was 1 in 32 of the employed.

From 1830 to 1836 the average number dying annually was 1 in 72 of the employed.

But—