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contrary are diminished by the efflux of a certain number
of those who, in a statistical sense, are the very vitality of
the family. There remains, therefore, a population somewhat
below the normal average in health and strength,
which of itself would naturally yield a comparatively high
death-rate, and in which the death-rate is liable to be still
further increased, from the fact that many of those who
have left the parent roof return thither to die when fatal
illness overtakes them. lam not, of course, asserting that
all the households of Peckham are of one class, or that all
the households of Dulwich are of another class ; I am not
asserting that all the elder children of the poor go out to
service, or that of those that die all die at their own homes
and none in the house of their master. But I assert that
the one class of household prevails in Peckham, the other
class prevails in Dulwich ; that the differences in regard to
them which I have pointed out are real differences, which
must necessarily affect the respective death-rates of Peckham
and of Dulwich; and that differences of death-rate due
to these conditions are totally unconnected with local
salubrity or insalubrity.
"The fact is that the sanitary condition of a locality
is much more truly measured by the comparative prevalence
in it of certain forms of disease than by mere variations of
death-rate; although no doubt a large, and especially an
increasing, death-rate is a matter to arrest attention and to
demand inquiry. Thus if, in a certain place, ague prevails,
we know it to be unhealthy from the presence of marsh
miasm; if cholera or typhoid fever prevails in a locality, we
have good reason to believe that in that locality the atmosphere
or the water is unduly impregnated with the poison of cess-