January 1,
NATIVE MIDWIVES.
1870.]
PROGRESSIVE ADVANCE IN THE HEALTH OP LONDON. A blue book the
recently published
notes tlie
striking
advance in
public health in proportion to the advance of sanitary
improvements. Years 1629-35.?Metropolitan death-rate 5 per cent, per annum, from fevers, dysenteries, consumption, infantile diseases. 16G0-1G79.?Death-rate, including the Great Plague, 8 per ceut.; chief
causes :
foul air and foul water diseases.
1728-1757.?Mortality 5*2 per cent, per annum ; due to the same diseases, with the exception of a great reduction of deaths from dysentery, apparently coincident with the extension of a from the New River, purer water-supply 1771-1780.?Death-rate was still 5 per cent.; due to the same
diseases.
During this period London was undrained, the sub-soil was lioney-combetl witli cess pits, into Avhich all the filth and foul water of households were passed. The dead were buried among the living, and much of the water-supply was derived from wells dug in the same foul sub-soil. In the years from 180L-1S10, with a still increasing population, the death-rate fell to 2'9. The reduction was chiefly in miasmatic and infantile diseases and in consumption. Frarn 1831 to 1835, including deaths from cholera, the death-rate was 3'2 per cent. During the next 14 years, from 1850 to 1861, the deathrate was 2'2 per cent., with a great diminution of mortality from miasmatic and tubercular diseases. ments
hud made
Drainago abolished, wells
works
advances
rapid had
been
Sanitary
during these
improve-
latter years.
everywhere extended, ccss-pits
intra-mural burials had ceased, old unwholesome
were no
longer used,
and
a
purer
water-supply
had been
extended. The present
death-rate,
low
as
it
is,
is still too
high.
19