Researches upon the necropolis of New Orleans, with brief allusions to its vital arithmetic / by Bennet Dowler.

  • Bennet Dowler
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Researches upon the necropolis of New Orleans, with brief allusions to its vital arithmetic / by Bennet Dowler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    ?6 ?$ew (Means, placed between the great valley of the Mississippi, and' *he treat ocean, receives such a disproportionate number of unacclima- ted strangers, as to destroy ail just comparisons with other cities, under our present system of determining the ratio of mortality. The census of New Orleans, by the United States, how correctly so- ever taken, must in its application to this city, at least, virtually mis- lead the vital statistician. The census of 1850, will have been taken in midsummer, during the brief absence of one third of the population proper. Add to the annual mortality of the absentees and of the stran- gers who will have arrived soon after the decennial enumeration, and it will probably be found, without any epidemic fever whatever, that two thirds of the mortality will have happened, during the ensuing year, among these classes, not enumerated. Now, when this mortality is distri- buted among those actually counted, in the census, the ratio will be high, and, at the same time, statistically false. The vital statistics of N. Orleans is, in a great deo-ree peculiar, because its vital conditions are so, both statically and dynamically, internally and externally. For 36 years ending in 1837, the annual mean increase of population, in France, was 147,918. (D'Angeville. ) Now according to the es- timate of some, the annual increase of temporary residents in New Or- leans, is one hundred and twenty-three thousand—a number, not twenty five thousand less than the annual increase in all France. This last country requires 139 years to double its population, while New Orleans more than doubles its population by temporary residents, annually.— These latter, leave their dead to swell the bills of mortality in New Orleans. The Report asserts that England and Massachusetts are favorable to infantile life, beyond all the known parts of the world, N. Orleans except- ed; the climate [of the latter] bping extremely mild at all periods of life under 20 and above 50. True. But no country or city with such a climate, ought to have a short mean life ; nor ought 1 in 20 to die an- nually ; nor is it easy to comprehend how the mortality is at least doub- le what it ought to be, to use the words and italics of the Report.— In fact, the Report names places where the annual mortality is but 1 in 55 ; 1 in 44, &c; that is to say, nearly three times less than in New Orleans. Well may it be affirmed, that the mortality in the latter, is at least double what it ought to be. The California emigration now in progress, is a remarkable example of the perturbations which social physics exercise over vital statistics. Salubrious towns along the routes pursued, will soon double their mor- tality, without any increase of sickness among the natives or passengers. The grave-yard statistics of California must, ^trcady, differ from those of any other country. The mortuary records must contain males, rather than females and children, young men rather than aged, and withal a long mean life, be the ratip of mortality high or low. The system of migration continues to flow to the torrid zone, or to the tropical borders of both temperate zones; to the plains of the Missis- sippi, to the Llanos, and Pampas of South America, and to the West
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