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MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON.
19
venient time for indicating to you the pressure of
preventable death, arising in acute disease, because
of the great addition which you have recently gained
to your powers for enforcing prevention.
That an average death-rate of nearly 25 per
thousand per annum prevails in the City; that
three-eights of your mortality consists in a premature
extinction of infant life ; that fatal disease, in
more than two-fifths of its visitations, is of a kind
which operates endemically and preventably; these
are the facts to which I have appealed, as my evidence
of the need for sanitary activity and perseverance.
On other occasions I have endeavoured to set
before you what are those agencies hostile to life,
which affect the masses of an urban population; and
during the last three years your Honourable Court
has shown its recognition of these causes, and has
devoted attention to the means of counteracting
them by appropriate sanitary measures.
In too many instances, the powers first given you
by the Legislature were inadequate to this great
purpose. But now, armed with the further authority
of your new Act of Parliament, you enjoy such
means for sanitary improvement as have never yet
been possessed by any Corporation in the country;
such means as, judiciously wielded, cannot but
produce the greatest advantage to persons living
under your jurisdiction.
As you are only now entering on the exercise of
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