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

  • Bennet Dowler
Date:
1850
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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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    Which it is liable, ajipeafs to be this; namely, very young children may not have had inscriptions on their vaults, as constantly as adults ; though this hypothesis may be incorrect. But admitting that it is true, this source of error is neutralized, it may be supposed, by an undenia- ble fact, that, in all the cemeteries, even those which reflect the Creole life most truly, as the Catholic, strangers, victims to the climate who lived not half their days, are buried, and being com): .1 I md I (short- en the average life, probably as much, as the sup] a infantile inscriptions, tends to enhance it. The evidence upon, the whole, if not demonstrative, possesses probability, nn : 'hat it is worth—no more. The grave-yard statistics which follow, may present much more favorable than those afforded by the report of the Board of Health, for 1849. Hence it is proper to offer a few illustrative arguments which may explain the low average life reported by the Board, com- pared with that derived from inscriptions. The report relates in every case to a later period, during which immigration, and the causes of death have been most active. My observations relate to a period not only anterior to, but often very remote from that referred to by the Board. One of the dynamical laws of population, which, after a most labor- ious analysis of the decennial census of 1840, I have deduced, may serve to explain the shortness of the mean life which the Board announces from very recent data. The law referred to, shows that in the geographical distribution of ages, there is a tendency to throw into the West and South-West, an undue proportion of the young, among whom the causes of death are the most active. This must tend to reduce the average age. For, how infirm and unproductive so ever, the old may be, they contribute in a marked degree to extend the average life. Thus four children dying- aged one year, will, by means of one centenarian dying at the same time, have a mean life of 20.8 years each. If I mistake not, the explanation of this dynamical law is to be sought for in the economy of immigration, which tends to leave'the aged, in their native land, as physically disqualified for the hardships incidental to new countries, new climates, and new enterprizes. The immature class of emigrants, that is, the infantile, is not repelled, as in the case of the aged, since it is not doomed to hopeless decline and increasing disa- bility. Hence, the British Government offers a free passage to emi- grants to Australia, with support for ten days after landing, on the con- dition that they shall be adults and shall be able to labor and shall not be more than thirty-five years old. The internal immigration in the United States, including that from foreign countries, flows to the west and to the south-west, and comprehends an unusual proportion of younH fathers, mothers, and children, who, oppressed with cares, poverty and augmenting numbers, resign, in a great degree the pleasures of society, owns wT^l* WlldemefVr a temporary residence in southern towns, where labor is rewarded with double or triple wages.
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