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and to become seriously virulent at certain seasons
than at others—phthisis, for example, is most fatal
in winter, hydrocephalus in spring, and tabes and
scrofula in summer; and each form of zymotic
disease has its special season of activity.
And lastly, with regard to the ages at which
these diseases are most severe, it appears from
the returns of the last ten years, that the greatest
sufferers from small-pox, pneumonia, and diarrhoea,
are infants of less than a year old—that in fact
more than half of the total mortality from these
diseases is among infants of that age. The deaths
from measles are most numerous at from 1 to 2
years of age, and then from 2 to 5. Scarlatina
shows the largest mortality at from 2 to 5 years of
age, and the smallest at less than a year; but
whooping-cough is almost equally fatal at each
period of infant life.
Some of these facts are easy of interpretation.
The child is very susceptible of the morbific
influences which hang about the filthy and overcrowded
dwellings of the poor; and in summer
time, when these influences are brought into a
state of great activity by the putrefying action of
warmth, the child falls a victim to diarrhœa; or its
vital powers are so depressed that it succumbs to
an attack of measles or scarlet-fever; or it more