Statistics of the British Empire : mortality of the metropolis : a statistical view of the number of persons reported to have died, of each of more than 100 kinds of disease, and casualties, within the bills of mortality, in each of the two hundred and four years, 1629-1831 ... / by J. Marshall.

  • John Marshall
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Statistics of the British Empire : mortality of the metropolis : a statistical view of the number of persons reported to have died, of each of more than 100 kinds of disease, and casualties, within the bills of mortality, in each of the two hundred and four years, 1629-1831 ... / by J. Marshall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    The Chronicon Preciosum states that, in 1270, [54 Hen. III.] wheat was so dear that it was sold at £4. 16. 0 the quarter, and sometimes at 16s. the bushel, which makes it at £6. 8. 0., but no cause is assigned for this inor- dinate price, which may be considered as equal to £40 per quarter, in the present day [1832]. The next great event is the Plague of 1348—9; and thirteen Years after another great mortality is mentioned, of which the nobility suffered greatly, 3. Rich. II. [1379] Mortality so great in the Nprth that the Country became almost desolate. 17—19. Edw. IV. [1478—81] innumerable people died. See Holinshecl as quoted in Section 34. Hen. VII. Sweating sickness. 15. do. 1500. 22. do. 1507. 9. Hen. VIII. 1518. 13. do. do. 1522. 20. do. do. 1529. 33. do. do. 1542. 33. do. do. 1545. 30,000 died of the Plague in London. See Holinshed as above. Norwich nearly consumed by Fire. Sweating Sickness, wliich carried off infinite multitudes of nobility, and others Great Mortality. Sweating Sickness over the whole realm. Hot Agues and Fluxes. Great Plague. 5. Edw. VI. 4. Mary 5. do. 6. Eliz. 36. do. 1. James. 1552. Sweating Sickness very general. 1557. Hot burning Agues, &c. Seven aldermen in London died. 1558. Great Mortality in Harvest. 1563. Plague, of which 21,500 died in London. 1593. do. do. 17,890 died, including the Lord Mayor and three Aldn, 1603. do. do. 30,578. 38. The numbers that died weekly during the two last enumerated periods are exhibited at pages 65—8, from which date the detailed display of the Diseases and Mortality of the Metropolis in the present Work commences; since when numerous treatises, both in France and England, have appeared, endeavouring to show the cause and nature of Pestilential Diseases, and offering innumerable remedies for their prevention and cure; they are, however, all equally deficient in facts, and equally vague and unsatisfactory in their attempts at reasoning—all alike appear to have overlooked the basis upon which all physical investigations should be founded, viz., a simple record of facts—the past and still prevailing aversion to which in physical and social inquiries is a feature of the times as remarkable as it is to be lamented for the consequences which it involves. It is also as much a matter of surprise as of regret that while the mechanical arts, and some of the abstract sciences, have been carried to a degree of perfection which bespeaks an unlimited capability in man, in all that relates to his animal and social economy, as well as agriculture, as far as any chemical, or strictly scientific, or philosophical appliances are concerned, the greatest uncertainty still prevails, and, consequently, they remain exposed to a constant conflict of opinion and conceit. The elementary principles of nature are simple and determi- nate ; men, in common with all other animals, subsist by a reciprocal interchange with the vegetable part of the creation, of the opposite gases which they respectively absorb and exhale: what is food to one is poison to the other, and vice versa. The Atmosphere is the common depositoiy for the reception and supply of both; while the well-being of the whole depend, not on the existence of the means of subsistence, per se, but simply on their due proportion to each other. If, therefore, the Atmosphere abounds in any particular locality with an undue preponderance of either hydrogen or oxygen, or venomous animalcula: which the decomposition of vegetable matter engenders, animals and Vegetables must respectively and necessarily alike be subject to derangement.