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

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СКАЧАТЬ religion, climate, genius, industry, riches, poverty, taxes, luxury, refinement, wars, colonization, emigration, commerce, agriculture, the unequal distribution and monopoly of property and farms, the plenty, scarcity, and cheapness of food; and, with many other causes, closely allied to our future medicinal investigation. Under governments and nurture, directed with political and moral, together with medical prudence and circumspection, the earth and ocean would probably afford ample nutriment, and their population might be multiplied to three times eight hundred million.

Extending our views over the surface of the globe, we perceive striking distinctions between the human species; not only in the four great continents, but also in different parts of the same continent. These differences are principally manifest in the colour of the skin; in the complexion, countenance, physiognomy, hair, form, and stature. We attend here merely to corporeal distinction, without including the intellectual. These great Classes of mankind may be divided into the Laplander, the Tartar, the Chinese, the European, the African-negro, and the native American. The modern-discovered inhabitants in the islands of the Pacific ocean, seem to have no remarkable cast of countenance or figure to sever them into a separate class. But throughout a considerable extent of the globe, from conquest, emigration, colonization, and commercial intercourse, many nations are now blended and assimilated into one; and their elementary characteristic features more faintly imprinted. Besides, every one’s experience and observation will instruct him, that in populous kingdoms those classes branch out into innumerable intermixtures, orders, and genera; and that the species and varieties are as numerous as the individuals of the human race. Amongst the ab-origines, and stationary inhabitants of most kingdoms, there are indeed some prominent features peculiar to each community; which are, in some degree, conspicuous in the corporeal, and still more in the mental outlines. Mankind, exclusive of their original mould, as issued from the mint of the Creator, are afterwards diversified by climate, soil, diet, government, religion, association, occupation, and habit.

      By Civilization, mankind are arranged and connected into an infinite series of descending and dependent links. In a state of nature there are few gradations in society; few professions or mechanical arts. Mr. Voltaire makes two great divisions of mankind; the oppressors, and the oppressed. Descending the mole-hill and ladder from the throne to the cottage, we may trace a multitude of gradations in the scale of polished communities. We descend thro’ nobility and gentry of independent fortunes, in lands or money; through literary professions, including divinity, medicine, law, and various other branches of active or speculative science: all of which united, constitute, even in the most opulent nations, but a small portion of the community. We next descend to a fertile hive of husbandmen and artizans, laborious drudges in mechanical trades, arts, manufactories, and commerce: to a numerous class of retailers or venders of merchandize, and of the necessaries of life: to soldiers, sailors, domestick servants: to no inconsiderable multitude buried under ground, and occupied in digging metals and fuel from the bowels of the earth: to infirm, cripples, diseased, puerperal, aged; and to many other links and gradations, which must be greatly diversified by the variety in governments, religion, climate, national genius, and other causes which will occur to philosophers, and to gentlemen of reflection. It is of essential importance, not only in an enlarged political, but also in a medicinal view, to contemplate these constituent portions of a community.

The inhabitants crowded into Cities and towns, and those dispersed in small villages, and in the Country, constitute other large groups of society. If the result of Susmilch’s researches and materials, collected throughout Germany can be depended upon as a criterion for other European nations, the inhabitants in the country are to those in cities and towns as 3½ to 1. Great cities, if we except Rome and Constantinople, are of modern date in most kingdoms of Europe. In the ninth century, a few towns had been built in Germany; but in England, corporations and considerable towns are posterior to the Norman invasion. Cities, associated communities, and towns, during the religious frenzy of crusading, and after the termination of this epidemical distemper, were asylums from aristocratic tyranny; and when of moderate size, are seats of politeness, refinement, emulation, arts, and society; but when overgrown, they check population; they are drains of the human species, the graves of infants, and nurseries of vices. Unfortunately also for succeeding generations, numerous cities, towns, and harbours, have been founded upon low, unhealthy situations, surrounded by morasses and hills. Most cities seem to have grown to maturity by accident and time: their streets are narrow, irregular, not sufficiently ventilated; and the inhabitants absurdly and perniciously thronged together. There are moderate-sized towns, and even country districts, whose situations are so noxious, as to make the burials exceed the births. We need not travel to new uncultivated continents and islands, nor to rank tropical climates for proofs: we have only to consult Dr. Short’s Registers of several parts in this kingdom.

The assemblages of the human race are greatly diversified by their Ages. During nine months only of uterine incubation, and from the most minute tadpole, an infant at birth has grown to between sixteen inches and two feet; and from five to ten pounds in weight. After birth, the increase is slower; and it proceeds to shoot upwards a few inches annually, but not always in successive progression, and to make additions to its weight and dimensions. Between puberty and twenty-one years of age, man has generally attained to the summit of his altitude; females, rather earlier; and those still earlier who inhabit warm climates. Excluding that fragment of pigmy mortals, the Laplanders, between five and six feet in height is the most universal and mean standard of the human race; and their gravity in various gradations, from eight to twenty stone; in both which respects, females usually fall short of males. Nature, however, is not limited to one model of altitude or gravity; she sometimes deviates into extravagancies, producing human giants, from nine, down to diminutive dwarfs of two feet; together with shapeless monsters wallowing in fat, and weighing upwards of forty stone. Let us next endeavour to form arithmetical estimates of the human race, at different ages. Davenant calculates the inhabitants of England (not including Scotland) at five million and a half; and their sundry ages as follows:—Under one year of age, 170,000; under five years of age, 820,000; under ten years of age, 1,500,000; under sixteen years of age, 2,240,000: from sixteen years of age to the extreme of existence, 3,260,000; of which number he estimates 600,000, or about one ninth part of the whole community, to have passed sixty years of age; and of which veteran group the males constitute 270,000; the females, 330,000. Dr. Price supposes nearly an equal proportion living under 16, and above that age; but that the latter are the most numerous class: Davenant states the medium at 20. Dr. Halley supposed the number living under 16, to comprize about one third of the community; and also, that those living between 20 and 42, were about one third of the whole. The preceding analysis of the numbers living at different ages in one kingdom, may with facility be applied to any numerical extent. If we wish to calculate the proportion living at similar ages amongst one hundred million, we have only to multiply by 18 each of the preceding groups composing five million and an half of inhabitants.

Two large and important classes are formed in society, by the distinction of the Sexes into male and female. So soon as the organs of generation are completely evolved; that is, when the two sexes arrive at puberty, they are inflamed with a new passion and pleasing sense. In most warm climates, this generative period is somewhat earlier than in northern latitudes; and in the former also, women are said to be more prolifick. We shall therefore devote a few words to the union of the sexes, from whence ensue procreation and births. Some calculators have computed, that amongst five million and an half of inhabitants in England, there are annually about forty-one thousand legal marriages: of which one sixth part are widows and widowers; about one marriage to every one hundred and four inhabitants; and the annual marriages to the births, as 1 to 4, or 4½. The mean ages at which marriages in this island commence, is computed from 32 to 35 on the side of the man, and 25 on that of the woman; but in this estimate, second and third marriages are included.

In cities, not only fewer enter into the matrimonial state, but the product also of city and country-marriages is observed to differ. Marriages in cities, one with another, seldom produce above four; generally between three and four, and sometimes not three children: whereas country-marriages seldom produce less than four, and generally between four СКАЧАТЬ