ZOOLOGY. 373 



At Melegano, several French soldiers while charging bayonet fell, mortally 

 wounded with grape-shot; their faces rested on the ground and their bayo- 

 nets pointed in advance. 



At Magenta, among the slain strewed upon the battle-ground, several 

 Austrian officers were recognized of distinguished physiognomy, dressed 

 with the utmost care and propriety in glossy gloves ; one might say that 

 they had affectedly made their toilet in anticipation of death. Their fine 

 blond heads of hair and regular features, for the most part different from 

 the common soldiers, had the expression of bravery and resignation. 



Next to such a vast panorama of death, the dead-house of the Charity 

 Hospital of New Orleans, during a great epidemic of yellow fever, may 

 claim a place. The physiognomy of the yellow-fever corpse is usually sad, 

 sullen, and perturbed ; the countenance dark, mottled, yellow, livid, stained 

 with blood and black vomit, and swollen; the eyes prominent and blood- 

 shotten and yellow. The veins of the face and of the whole body often 

 become distended; the whole expression is less calm and placid than in 

 most other corpses, especially such as have died of hsemorrhages, Dr. B. 

 Doider in JV. 0. Medical and Surgical Journal. 



STATISTICS OF COXSIDIPTION. 



At a recent meeting of the American Geographical Society, New York 

 City, an elaborate paper was presented by Dr. H. B. Millard, " On the Facts 

 and Statistics of Consumption throughout the World." Some of the points of 

 interest embodied in this communication are as follows : 



It has been estimated that about one sixth of all the deaths among the 

 human race occur from consumption. In New York city it destroys one 

 third more lives than all the other diseases of the respiratory organs, such as 

 bronchitis, congestion and inflammation of the lungs, catarrh and influenza, 

 whooping-cou^-h, asthma, etc. No climate is exempt from its sway, but it 

 exercises its remorseless rule in the frosty climes of the north, in the scorch- 

 ing heats of Africa, and in the more genial atmosphere of the temperate 

 zones. In using the word " consumption," the speaker said he referred to 

 that variety of phthisis characterized by a deposition of tubercles in the res- 

 piratory organs. Dr. Caspar, in 1847, from a table of 00,000 deaths occurring 

 from various diseases, within twenty or thirty years, found that the ratio of 

 deaths by consumption to deaths from other diseases was as 1 to 5.7. He 

 (the speaker) had found, from a table he had lately constructed, that of 

 2,771,728 deaths from all diseases, between 1804 and I860, 483,583 deaths, or 

 1 in 5.7, were caused by consumption. These deaths occurred in almost every 

 variety of climate. There are, however, some countries in which consump- 

 tion is entirely unknown. There has been no material increase or diminution 

 of the disease. Statistics of the city of London, kept for two hundred and 

 thirty years, show that from 1629 to 1740 it caused 6.6 part of all the deaths, 

 while from 1740 to 1830 it caused 4.6 part, or nearly one third as many more. 

 Since 1830, however, the deaths have seldom exceeded one sixth part of the 

 whole. In New York, from 1804 to 1820, the deaths by consumption were one 

 in 4.2; from 1820 to 1830, 1 in 5.4; from 1835 to 1850, 1 in 6.5; and from 1848 

 to 18-19, 1 in 8.46. There is no doubt that it has steadily declined since 1805. 

 In Boston, from 1810 to 1818, the deaths by consumption were about 1 in 7. 

 Since then there has been a gradual decrease till 1845, when it caused about 

 1 death in C.5. While consumption prevails here to such an alarming extent, 



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