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MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON.
11
visitation of 1849, you will find 902 deaths referred
to Asiatic Cholera, and to other kindred diseases.
Comparatively few cases of the kind have occurred
since Michaelmas 1849; an overwhelming
majority belonged to the summer-quarter then
terminating, when the Metropolis generally was
suffering from the presence of Cholera. I have
already had occasion to show you that this frightful
pestilence belongs only to localities which,
by their general epidemic mortality, have previously
been stigmatised as unhealthy; that, over districts
otherwise healthy, it migrates without striking a
blow; that it may, therefore, with confidence be
spoken of as a disease proportionate to removable
causes—in other words, as a preventable disease.
I cannot pass over these two columns, without
begging you to observe what perhaps may be novel
to you. If, instead of reckoning the cholera deaths
as belonging solely to the one year in which they
happened, you reckon them as belonging to the
whole term of years which elapsed between the two
visitations of the epidemic, and distribute them
equally over that period, so as to form an average—
say for fifteen years, you cannot fail to notice how
largely, in the long run, the destruction by fever
(which is always here) surpasses the fatality of that
Eastern disease; so much so, that the average annual
mortality by the latter probably does not amount to
half the fatality of the former.
Nor must it be lost sight of, that if the deaths