DEATH-TOLL OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 139 



of alcohol is probably still niore fatal than its direct 

 influence. 



It is probable that the mode of feeding young children, 

 especially in the manufacturing districts, is becoming less 

 and less adequate to their needs. 



The inquiries made by Dr. Ferguson, of Bolton, and 

 others, show that tea and many other forms of experimental 

 foods are now tried upon children instead of the milk that 

 was formerly more easily procured, and that the result is 

 a gradual falling-off in the physical power of our manu- 

 facturing populations. 



There can then be no doubt that the adverse influences 

 bearing upon infant life have been increasing in intensity 

 during the last twenty years, and they have not failed to 

 produce their effect. 



Notwithstanding the effects of overcrowding and intem- 

 perance, the adult mortality of the country, owing to some 

 beneficent cause or other, has, on the whole, slightly di- 

 minished ; but the mortality under five years of age has 

 increased. 



The following Table (p. 140), kindly prepared for me by 

 Mr. Royston from the Returns of the Registrar-General, 

 shows this in a striking manner, the adult mortality having 

 lessened • 1 7 per 1 000, the infant mortality having increased 

 1*50 per 1000 in the fifteen years ending 1870. 



I think it will be acknowledged that it is not easy for 

 sanitary science to struggle against the hostile forces that 

 have now been enumerated. If they had not been met by 

 measures to some extent competent to mitigate their power, 

 the condition of the country would have been perilous in the 

 extreme ; and at the present time we are by no means free 

 from serious danger, owing to their increasing pressure — 

 danger of epidemic disease fostered by the organic matter 

 generated by overcrowding, danger from intemperance to 



