Value of Human Life in Canada. 181 



by an average of many years. Such is the enormous infantile 

 mortality of Quebec, amounting to 69 out of every 100 in 1851. 



The same may be said with respect to the last column, which 

 represents the percentage of deaths arising from " xymotic" or 

 air-poison diseases, which, though generated even in country 

 places, are peculiarly destructive in towns, where they are not 

 instantly diluted with fresh air. In England, out of every million 

 persons living in the country, 3,422 die every year of these diseases; 

 while of the same number living in towns, 6013, or nearly double 

 the number, die from the same causes. The returns for Canada, 

 however, will have to be corrected by an average of years ; for we 

 find healthy Hamilton losing half of its total number from these 

 diseases, while Montreal loses only 15, and Kingston, with less 

 than half its mortality, only 8. The town-smells, therefore, have 

 other ways of killing-ofT those who inhale them than by infectious 

 complaints, ana this they do, in general, by the gradual weakening 

 of the constitution, through which the system is unable to bear 

 up against whatever disease happens to attack the sufferer. 



It appears, therefore, by comparing the averages of Montreal 

 and its adjacent districts, even leaving out the fever year, that 

 there are 21 deaths in every thousand persons which might yearly 

 be prevented; that is, on the present population of (say) 65,000 

 inhabitants, the people of Montreal hill-off thirteen hundred and 

 sixty-Jive of their own flesh and blood every year, who would not 

 die did they only pay as much attention to health in the city as 

 they do in the country ; to say nothing of hundreds of lives more 

 which country and towns' people alike sacrifice on the altar of 

 self-indulgence and " laissez-faire.'''' 



But this is not all. From the returns of the Manchester Dis- 

 pensaries, it appears that to every case of death there are 28 cases 

 of sickness. These, on the average of the Preston Siek Clubs, 

 last 5 weeks each. Therefore the people of Montreal voluntarily 

 tax their health to the extent of 38,220 cases of sickness every 

 year, which is equal to a loss of 191,100 weeks, or 2,674 years; 

 that amount requiring to be taken twice over, once for tbe suffer- 

 ing invalid and again for the anxious nurse. 



Nor is this the whole of the evil. There is a large amount of 

 general enfeeblement of health, which does not develope into actual 

 disease. This brings misery on the daily life, urges to the use of 

 poisonous stimulants, often leads to recklessness of conduct, 

 destroys the desire and even the power of amendment, and works 

 corruption throughout the whole fabric of society. 



