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and 25; from diarrhoea, 18 and 30; from fever, 18 and
19; from croup and diphtheria, 4 and 8.
From pulmonary diseases, the numbers in the two
years was 188 and 183: this includes 72 cases of consumption
in 1858, and 88 in 1859; of diseases of the
brain there were 89 deaths in each year; from diseases
of the heart the numbers were 41 and 34; from diseases
of the intestines the numbers were the same in both
years, 23; from old age there were 42 deaths in 1858;
and 39 in 1859; of deaths from violence, or accident,
31 occurred in 1858, 23 in 1859; 4 suicides occurred in
1858, 3 in 1859.
The infant mortality was in larger proportion in 1859,
the numbers being 191 in 1858, 213 in 1859; of deaths
under the age of 5 years, hooping cough and diarrhoea
were the diseases causing the excess, there being 11
more deaths from the former, and 16 more from the
latter.
The visitations of epidemics, or zymotic diseases, are
among the mysteries in the laws of the universe which
we have not yet fathomed; that they are bred before our
eyes by bad ventilation, sewer emanations, or the concentration
of other known causes of bad health, must
not be considered the explanation, although asserted by
a lady,* whose benevolence and authority on all that
relates to the management of the sick may be studied
with advantage by the whole world. How to deal with
epidemic diseases, when they occur, of this problem, we
may assume to have obtained considerable knowledge;
but why they occur, and the laws by which they select
some localities, avoiding others, and in subsequent outbreaks
selecting the letter, and avoiding the former;
*I have seen with my eyes, and smelt with my nose, small-pox
growing up in first specimens, either in close rooms, or in overcrowded
wards, where it could not by any possibility have been caught, but must
have begun.—Miss Nightingale's Notes on Nursing.