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15
MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON.
There are deaths by cholera, epidemic diarrhoea,
and dysentery, of which during the biennial period
we have had nearly 900; by fever, of which we
have had 284; by erysipelas and puerperal fever,
of which we have had 84 ; by small-pox, of which
we have had 50: and cases of this sort partake of
the nature of deaths by violence, not only because
they are abrupt and untimely, but because they are
avoidable,. If in the cases which I have specified,
it were possible to make inquiry into the antecedent
circumstances of the dead, you would find irrefragable
evidence that life was lost in each individual
instance by the operation of removable causes—by
the foolhardy neglect of some familiar precaution,
or by the obstinate retention of some notorious ill.
The death of a child by small-pox would in most
instances call for a verdict of "homicide by omission,"
against the parent who had neglected daily
opportunities of giving it immunity from that disease
by the simple process of vaccination : the death of
an adult by typhus would commonly justify still
stronger condemnation (though with more difficulty
of fixing and proportioning the particular responsibility)
against those who ignore the duties of property,
aad who knowingly let, for the occupation of
the poor, dwellings unfit even for brute tenants,
dwellings absolutely incompatible with health. In
addition to the diseases which I have named, there
are others which owe their chief malignity and numerical
largeness of fatality, though not their