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16 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON.
death-rates of children under Jive years of age.
The first column will of course indicate very well
the relative sanitary conditions of the districts; but
the differences between them will be expressed far
more clearly, and, as it were, in a magnified form,
in the column of infantine death-rates.
Thus, for instance—to repeat the comparison just
instituted between the Northumberland and the
London district; the death-rate for all ages over
five, is about 12 in the former district, and nearly
15 in the latter; a difference quite sufficient to
establish the inequality of their sanitary conditions.
But, how much more strongly is this disparity
expressed in the comparison of the infantine deathrates—26.5
for the healthier district, 107.57 for the
unhealthier one!
Nothing can be more conclusive than the evidence
afforded by statistics, as to the dependence of
high infantine mortality on the general causes of
endemic unhealthiness. My own observation within
the City gives complete confirmation to this view,
showing me that the diseases specified in my table
(diarrhoea, bronchitis and pneumonia, hooping
cough, croup and measles, hydrocephalus and convulsions)
however various in nature they may seem,
and however apt you may be to dissociate their
occurrence from the thought of local causation, yet
unquestionably multiply their victims, in proportion
to the otherwise demonstrable unhealthiness of a
place, owe most of their fatality to local causes, and