Epidemiology, or the remote cause of epidemic diseases in the animal and in the vegetable creation / With the cause of hurricanes and abnormal atmospherical vicissitudes.

  • John Parkin
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Epidemiology, or the remote cause of epidemic diseases in the animal and in the vegetable creation / With the cause of hurricanes and abnormal atmospherical vicissitudes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    Had the comparison been made with the 17th instead of the 18th century, the difference would have been still more striking. Independently of the diminution in the rate of mortality, the subsidence of disease, at this period, can be shown in another way—by a reference to the rate of survivance, at this and former periods. Table A.—Baie of Survivance at the undermentioned periods, and at different ages, in the Gity of Geneva. Tears. No. of those born, who reached 10 years of age. No. of those over 10 years, who reached 40 years of age. 1560 to 1600 42 per cent. 43 per cent. 1601 to 1700 48 53 „ 1701 to 1760 60 68 „ 1761 to 1800 61 71 „ 1801 to 1813 69 72 „ 1814 to 1833 74 72 „ It is thus apparent, that the chances of life, of survivor- ship, had nearly doubled in the course of two centuries. It appeared, in fact, that a sanitary millennium had set in about the middle, and particularly towards the end, of the last century ; a pleasing illusion, that was suddenly dissi- pated, in 1830, by the advent of the epidemic cholera, fol- lowed by fever and other diseases, which prevailed to a great and unusual extent—thus inaugurating the com- mencement of a new pestilential epoch. One fact is suf- ficient to prove this. It has been just stated, that the rate of mortality in Manchester, in 1811, was 13'51 per 1,000. But, during the ]0 years—1851—60, the average death rate, in this town, was 31 per 1,000—more than double. So far from sanitary reform having prevented the return, mitigated the severity, or lessened the mort- ality, of any disease, it has been actually provocative of