ZOOLOGY. 361 



was little more than 2 per cent. ; that the number of deaths from 

 cholera in India is twice as great among Europeans as among natives. 

 In Britain the number of deaths among the troops, generally, is 15 per 

 1,000 per annum, while among officers and the civil population it is only 

 9 per 1,000. In Franca the mortality among troops is 18 per 1,000, 

 among civilians it is 10 per 1,000. In the island of Barbadoes the 

 mortality among civilians is not more than 14 per 1,000, while among 

 European, troops it is 58 per 1,000. At the Cape of Good Hope, and 

 in West Africa, the mortality among troops is 450 per 1,000, or 45 

 per cent. ; in the navy at the same places it is only 25 per 1.000, or 

 2k per cent. In general the mortality among the sailors of the navy 

 is much less than among the troops. 



The effect of the means adopted for chocking disease in England, 

 France, and Germany, during the past century, are such that, while 

 formerly 1 out of every 30 of the population died each year, now the 

 average is 1 of 45, reducing by one half the number of deaths in these 

 countries. In the year 1700, 1 out of every 25 of the population died 

 in each year in England. In 1801 the proportion was 1 in 35; in 

 1811, 1 in 38 ; and in 1848, 1 in 45 ; so that the chances of life have 

 nearly doubled, in England, within 80 years. In the middle of the 

 last century the rate for Paris was 1 in 25, now it is 1 in 32. Keith 

 Johnson before the British Association. 



DISEASES INCIDENT TO THE EMPLOYMENT OF PHOSPHORUS. 



A COMMITTEE of the French Academy has assigned a prize of a 

 thousand francs to a memoir of Drs. Bibra and Ghoist, of Nuremberg, 

 on the dangers connected with certain manufactures in which phos- 

 phoric matters are employed. They offer these general remarks : 

 " The progress of industry, the changes in processes, have not been 

 universally advantageous to man. Certain arts, doubtless, have been 

 so improved as to render them less insalubrious ; but, on the other 

 hand, it has been seen that prejudicial incidents, or certain maladies, 

 occur more frequently than of yore ; and what is more remarkable, 

 new maladies or new forms of disease are seen ; thus the art of pre- 

 paring phosphoric matches, which has been so widely diffused, has be- 

 come the source of disease of the maxillary bones, both the upper and 

 the lower, which affects a considerable portion of the persons employed 

 in that manufacture. When it does not threaten life, it occasions the 

 loss of the affected bone. This singular effect of phosphoric emanations 

 was first observed in Germany, and there Dr. Roux studied it when it 

 had not been yet noted in France. There is, besides, a curious cir- 

 cumstance, that females are more subject to it than men, and young 

 women more than those advanced in age.'' 



This disease of the jaw, necrosis, is quite common in lucifer match- 

 factories on the continent of Europe. The explanation of it is by no 

 means difficult. The phosphate of lime as it exists in the bones is 

 insoluble in water, but by the arrival of an additional quantity of 

 phosphoric acid, which being present in the air is absorbed, and pene- 

 trates into the bones, the basic phosphate of the bones is converted 



31 



