Our homes and how to make them healthy / by R. Brudenell Carter [and others] ; edited by Shirley Forster Murphy.

Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Our homes and how to make them healthy / by R. Brudenell Carter [and others] ; edited by Shirley Forster Murphy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    30/972 (page 12)
    quartered soldiers was so bad tliat their mortality' was actually douljle what it ought to have been. The rate of mortality in the effective men of all ages of the army at home was 17'5 in the thousand. At the same time the rate of the mortality of the town and country population at the same ages was 9-2 in the thousand, while that in the country districts only was 7•7. In the population of one of the most unliealthy towns in the kiiigdom, namely Manchester, the mortality was then very high ; but even in this selected spot of unhealthiness it was only 12*4 per thousand of persons of the same ages compared with the 17'5 of the soldiery. Here was, then, a remarkable, series of facts in which contrasts of the most singular kind were established. Nor did the contrasts end as above stated. The soldier's life was a selected' life, and ought therefore to have been better than that of the civilian of the same ago. It Avas manifestly much worse, and so the' i-eporters wei'e led to a further analysis. They asked the question :—How does this soldier, selected in consequence of Ids good life, stand, in relation to life, by the side of the agricultural labourer of the same age? The soldier, they argued, ought to stand in a much better position than the agricultural labourer. His duty is in the open air, he receives an ample supply of food, he is housed at considerable expense; if he should fall sick, the Government stands to him in the place of a friendly society ; when sick he is at once sent to the hospital, however slight his illness may be. He has no care for the morrow, and he has all the treat- ment and all the nursing his case may require. Materially, therefore, the soldier in England had all the advantages of an agricultural labourer, with some other advantages that ought to have assisted his vital powers. How, then, did he stand in respect to vitality? The ansAvcr that came out was the startling one that, within corresponding ages, the mortality of the agricultural classes belonging to friendly societies was 6-055 per annum in a thousand, while in the soldier class it was 15-7— namely, IM per thousand in the household cavalry, 13-5 in the dragoons, 17'9 in the infantry of the line, and 20-4 in the Foot Guards. Some further facts were elicited from a comparison of the mortality of the selected soldiers by the side of men of out-door trades in towns, and men of trades that were partly ■ in-door and partly out-door, and over whom the friendly society did or did not throw its protection ; and, again the tale was told that the mortality in these unfavoured ranks was little less than half that of the Foot Guai-ds. Even the printers yielded 9-090 to the 20-4 mortality of the Foot Guards. When the cause of this great disparity came to be investigated, it was discovered that the diseases known as pulmonary were the fatal maladies which specially affected the soldier, and laid him low. It was discovered that while m civU life the deaths by pulmonary or chest diseases at the soldiers' ages were 6-3 per thousand, they amounted in the cavalry to 7-3, in the infantry of the line to 10-2, m the Guards to 13-8. Of the entire number of deaths from all causes in the army, diseases of the lungs constituted the following proportion :-in the cavalry 53-9 per cent. ; m the infantiy of the line 57-277 ; in the Guards 67-683 per cent. Pushing hen- inquiries one step farther still, the reporters came at last to the kernel of their task Why should these selected soldiers suffer so specially from diseases of the chest]