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11
OCCUPATION IN ITS RELATION TO MORTALITY.
I have abridged my remarks upon the foregoing subjects that I might be able to
say something upon the relation which the occupations of the people bear to our
mortality. In former years I have passed very lightly over the subject of our adult
mortality, nor can I do more than discuss one branch of the subject now. I have,
as I stated previously, taken out from the census tables the number of persons over
20 years of age, following sixteen kinds of occupation among the males, and five
kinds of occupation among the females. (Table VIII.) I have also gone through
the schedules of mortality sent me by the Registrar-General for a period of seven
years, namely for the years 1858 to 1864 inclusive, in order that I might have a
sufficient number of deaths to deal with satisfactorily. The numerical results of
this investigation are tabulated in Tables XIII. and XIV.
I propose considering the mortality of the persons following each of these
occupations separately, but before doing so, to avoid repetition, and at the same time
to enable you to draw conclusions which it might be inexpedient that I should do
more than hint at, I must ask permission to point out the usual causes of some
of those fatal maladies mentioned on Table XIV.
1. The four first sets of diseases mentioned affect adults principally, who by
residing in poor and overcrowded localities are most exposed to their contagia, or
who are exposed to them directly as a consequence of the business in which they
are employed. They are fatal also most especially to such as are irregular in their
habits of life, whose diet is not sufficiently nutritious, and whose occupation tends
to depress their general health. Typhoid fever, erysipelas, and puerperal fever are
more closely connected than tho other miasmatic diseases with putridity and the
emanations it generates.
2. The irregularities which give rise to delirium tremens and syphilis are both
indications of a careless sort of life.
3. Kidney diseases and those allied maladies which are associated with chronic
disturbance of the function of these important organs for purifying tho blood arise
from various causes, but the most common is what is called free living, and especially
habits of tippling—drinking for drinking's sake. Disease of this kind often brings
in its train disease of the heart, apoplexy, and paralysis.
4. Diseases of the Liver again are commonly due to the same bad habit. Where
ascites or abdominal dropsy is stated to be the cause of death, liver disease is mostly
its origin. Habits of intoxication are not necessary for this effect, it is sufficient
that persons habitually and frequently take spirituous drinks that they do not need,
and especially when they take them in place of nutritious food, and to satisfy a
morbid craving associated with disturbance of the digestive functions. More rarely
diseases of the liver are the result of a constitutional taint.
5. Diseases of the Heart such as are actually registered as the cause of death are a
common result of some previous attack of rheumatic fever, and liencc may be
primarily attributed to those exposures to cold and wet which, with hard labour,
insufficient food, and a poor condition of the blood, are ordinary causes of that disease.
The connection of heart diseases with drinking habits is partly direct and
partly indirect through the secondary influence upon the blood exerted by