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12
Among the principal causes of death during the
year are diseases of the respiratory organs. Instead
of an average of 508 deaths from pneumonia and
bronchitis, there were 553; and this excess was
distributed pretty evenly throughout all the districts
of the City. The high mortality from lung
diseases occurred chiefly in the spring and winter
quarters of the year. In the spring of 1860 the
number rose from an average of 92 to 127, and in
the winter quarter from 194 to 231. This excess
was undoubtedly due to the trying influence of the
weather, for during both of those seasons the atmosphere
was cold, and damp, and changeable. It is remarkable,
however, that the mortality from phthisis
and other diseases of a tubercular kind was not
excessive: in fact, the deaths from these affections
during the year have been greatly below the
average—phthisis declined from 366 to 341, tabes
and scrofula from 175 to 139, and hydrocephalus
from 95 to 71, making in all a diminution of
nearly 14 per cent. This would indicate that the
atmospheric conditions which aggravate or cause
inflammatory affections of the lungs, have not so
marked an influence on the tubercular forms of
disease. Indeed, their influence seems to be not so
much in affecting the processes of growth and nutrition,
as in producing local congestions and paralysing
nervous power. The action of cold is to drive the
blood from the surface of the body to the internal
organs; and by embarrassing the circulation, and