Moreover several acute diseases which hardly come under the name of Epidemics, such as Rheumatic Fever, Pneumonia, and Peripneumonia, are much less frequent and fatal now than they were a century ago.
All this time there has been a continually decreasing mortality. In 1700 the estimated mortality of England and Wales was 1 in 39; in 1750 it was 1 in 40; in 1801 it was 1 in 44; in 1810 it was 1 in 49; in 1820 it was 1 in 55, and in 1830 it was 1 in 58.
In London in 1700[[22]] the deaths were 1 in 25; in 1750, 1 in 21;[[23]] in 1801, 1 in 35; in 1810, 1 in 38; and in 1830, 1 in 45.
[22]. parliamentary Returns, 1811.
[23]. It is conceived that the remarkable increase of the mortality in the middle of this century was mainly caused by the abuse of spirituous liquors, which was checked about that time by the imposition of high duties.—Sir Gilbert Blane’s Dissertations.
The diminishing number of those who are born merely to die exhibits the decrease of mortality in a still more striking point of view. The estimated mortality of persons under twenty years of age in London in 1780 was 1 in 76; in 1801 it was 1 in 96; in 1830 it was 1 in 124; in 1833 it was 1 in 137; not much more than one-half the proportion who died under twenty half a century ago.
The contrast between the mortality of former times and of the present is seen in the mortality of London in 1685 and in 1830. In the first period the deaths were 1 in 23; in the second they were 1 in 45, little more than one-half. Truly therefore has it been said, that the salubrity of London in the nineteenth century and of London in the seventeenth is far greater than the difference between London in an ordinary season and London in the cholera.
But still we have had Cholera. In less than a quarter of a century we have had three visitations of this dreadful disease, which exhibits the essential characters of a pestilence of the middle ages; and if Typhus-gravior has disappeared, Typhus and its kindred diseases have taken its place; and the Registrar-General constantly presents before our eyes a faithful record of their ravages.
This is too true. We still have epidemics—and why? Because in all our towns there are large portions of the people who live in a state essentially the same as that which existed in the middle ages. The conditions are similar; the results are similar.
It is this unhappy class of people that form the exception to the general progress of the nation to which I have adverted.