A Comparative View of the Mortality of the Human Species, at All Ages. Black William

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СКАЧАТЬ this disparity between the product of city and country-marriages is to be imputed to dissipation, libertinism, and incontinence, both in the single and married state; to the cloudy apprehensions and fears of overstocking their house; to later, fewer, and less frequent unions in the matrimonial bond; or to all these and other causes combined, I submit to the reader’s consideration. From authentick registers of a variety of small towns and country parishes in England, Dr. Short found, that each marriage produced four and a half children, at a medium; for some married pairs have only one or two: others six, eight, twelve, or more; and a small remnant are unprolifick. Natural, or illegitimate children, are enrolled in the public records of christenings, and swell their proportion to the registered weddings somewhat greater than they would appear without this extraneous addition. In some German registers, Dr. Short found, that of 333,655 births, the illegitimate amounted to one thirty-seventh part; and in an inland town of England, that of 10,337 births, 284, or about one thirtieth part, were illegitimate.

If the number of inhabitants in any kingdom, city, or village, continues the same without increase or decrease, and supported by their own procreation only, it is evident, that there the annual births and burials will be equal, and the supply proportioned to the waste; and in equal numbers, as many will die at all ages as are born in the year, on a general average; and the numbers dying any year at one, two, three years of age, and so on to the extreme of existence, will be just equal with the numbers who successively attain to those different ages at which the others die. The total annual births amongst five million and an half of inhabitants in England, are calculated by Davenant at 190,000; which is about one birth to every twenty-five inhabitants; and amongst nine million of inhabitants in Britain and Ireland, the annual procreation will considerably exceed three hundred thousand; and the annual mortality should be somewhat inferior. In the kingdom of Prussia, from the year 1715 to 18, there were christened, at an annual medium, 78,826; buried, 55,852. In the kingdom of Sweden, the annual average of births during nine years, ending in 1763, was 90,240; burials, 69,125. In Norway, in 1761, the christenings were 11,024; burials, 6,926. In France, during three years, ending in 1772, the annual average of births was 920,918; burials, 780,040. In the county district of Vaux, in Switzerland, during ten years, the births were 3,155; burials, 2,504. The country, says Graunt, has 6,339 births for 5,280 burials. In that little fertile atlantic island Madeira, the inhabitants have been computed to double themselves in eighty-four years; so great is the difference between the births and burials. In some provinces of North America, if Dr. Franklin’s calculations are correct, the inhabitants double themselves in the short space of twenty-five, twenty-two, and even in fifteen years. On the other hand, in all the large cities of Europe: in Paris, Vienna, Rome, Dresden, Berlin, Amsterdam, London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and in almost all towns of considerable magnitude and population, the total annual births are inferior to the burials. It is calculated, that in London, within the last 150 years, near a million more of the human species have been wasted, beyond what were reared by its own original growth and procreation. But in small villages and country districts, the annual births exceed the burials; and it is from this redundance that a supply is furnished for the extraordinary consumption of armies, navies, war, colonization, emigration; exclusive of sickness, and other morbid casualties: the country and village surplus prevents depopulation.

      Providence has also wisely ordained, that throughout those European kingdoms, of which we have any registers, a few more Males should be born than Females; and indeed such a surplus is rendered necessary from the waste by wars, emigration, intemperance, mechanical arts, and trades, the inclemency and vicissitudes of the weather and seasons, the vices and misfortunes to which political punishments are annexed; with various other noxious casualties, to all which the male sex are most exposed. In Dr. Arbuthnot’s Table, printed in the London Philosophical Transactions, of the proportion between the births of the sexes; in forty-six years were baptized of males, 329,742; of females, 308,644: excess of males only, 21,098. By the London bills, from 1657 to 1776, I find that there have been christened of males, 1,041,149; of females, 983,061, or as 18 to 17: and therefore, that in this long interval of 120 years, and comprehending two million of births, there is only a trifling excess of males, amounting to 58,088: a number which would scarce recruit the consumption of a few active campaigns. The excess of male beyond female births, is not so considerable as books of calculation have represented. In volume the 7th of the Philosophical Transactions abridged, there is an account of the annual births during several years at Vienna, Breslaw, Dresden, Leipsic, and Ratisbon: and in those cities, male and female births were as nineteen to eighteen. Amongst the abortives and stillborn, we also find the plurality of males. Lastly, if the registers can be depended upon, it appears that there are more births in Winter than in Summer, both in town and country. But although the fruit of the human womb may not have arrived at maturity before winter, it is no proof against the general law of the spring and summer influence on animals and vegetables, in contributing to fecundity and generation.

CHAPTER I.

       Table of Contents

       The Comparative Mortality of the Human Species, and of the Sexes at every Age, in City, Town, and Country; and in different Kingdoms of Europe: illustrated with a Chart, and with Tables. The Comparative Mortality of the Human Species, by different Diseases and Casualties: exhibiting a Chart, and Tables of all the Mortal Diseases and Casualties in London during Seventy-five Years: illustrated by and contrasted with the united Observations of Medical Authors, with various Hospital Registers; and with a Variety of Materials, Observations, and Comments of the Author.

That learned Physician, Dr. Arbuthnot, in his Preface to Huygen’s “de Ratiociniis in ludo aleæ”, says, There are very few things which we know, which are not capable of being reduced to a mathematical reasoning; and when they cannot, it is a sign the knowledge of them is very small and confused; and, when a mathematical reason can be had, it is as great a folly to make use of any other, as to grope for a thing in the dark when you have a candle standing by you. Medical writers, almost universally, have neglected, or barely skimmed the surface of the following important subjects. The public registers of births, burials, and diseases, are overlooked by all the modern systematick authors: they leave us equally ignorant of the aggregate, or comparative number, or force of those fiends which haunt and ravage the globe. To speak metaphorically, in medical books, the extensive desolation of the most rapacious tyrants and conquerors are confounded with the uninteresting history, and petty depredations of a robber. The detached observations of physicians, or other literary individuals, confined perhaps to a small town or parish, a meagre detail of village remarks, furnish, in innumerable instances, foundations too slight for the erection and stability of general proportions. In order to form useful tables of the ratio of mortality at various ages, to determine upon the absolute and relative havock by different diseases, upon the general effects of climate, season, local situation, diet, drink, luxuries, new customs, and manners, &c. we should extend our views far beyond the narrow bounds of a parish, or even of a province; we should include an interval of many years, collective numbers, and large groups of mankind.

It appears to me, that a great number of the fundamental principles, or of the primary orders of medical architecture, have not yet been established, neither in Pathology, to which this Dissertation is chiefly related; and much less in Therapeuticks. The lumber and mountain of ponderous systems, heaped together from Galen to Stahl, can only be compared to Egyptian pyramids. Except what has been done by a few authors, hereafter to be mentioned, the sciences of Medical Arithmetick and Universal Prognosticks, are new in medicine. In emergencies, the constant appeal has been, with oracular reverence, to aphorisms and opinions of individuals. In a word, no medical author has yet attempted to take the gages of life and death, and of morbid devastation, and, in one general survey, to encircle the horizon of human existence and distempers. I have made some, at least laborious efforts, to rescue a momentous part of active medicine from that conjectural stigma with which the whole profession has been branded in the lump. And, however it may be slighted as an heretical innovation, I would strenuously recommend Medical Arithmetick, as a guide and compass through the labyrinth of Therapeuticks.

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