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18 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON.
and adulterated food, and, not least, inappropriate
marriages tending to perpetuate particular kinds of
disease; these words may suggest to you, briefly,
these various influences, within the sphere of private
life, by which the aggregate death-rate of a population
is largely enhanced, and the control of which,
if attainable, lies almost entirely at the discretion
of the classes subject to their operation.
Considering all these causes, and the needless
waste of life occasioned by them, I can have little
doubt that as much might be done by individuals,
under the influence of improved education, to lessen
the mortality from chronic disease, as by sanitary
legislation to stay the sources of epidemic death.
And, regarding both classes of disease together,
those, on the one hand which are of endemic origin
(arising in imperfect drainage, in defective watersupply,
in ill-devised arrangement of buildings, in
offensive and injurious trades, in the putrefaction of
burial-grounds, and the like) with these classes, on
the other, which arise in the circumstances of
individual life, I can have no hesitation in estimating
their joint operation at a moiety of our
total death-rate, or in renewing an assertion of my
last years Report, " if the deliberate promises of
Science be not an empty delusion, it is practicable
to reduce human mortality within your jurisdiction
to the half of its present average prevalence."
To revert, however, to your more special branch
of the subject,—I have thought the present a