48 



reports,* that the births were most numerous in the divi- 

 sions where the mortality was greatest, and the population 

 increasing most rapidly ; an increase of mortality, therefore, 

 was no specific for establishing an equilibrium. 



After detailing some of the more common causes which 

 more or less contribute to swell the rate of mortality in 

 infancy and childhood, the writer proceeded to investigate 

 the influences of temperature, and more particularly cold, 

 which was his more especial object in his paper. As 

 regarded the immediate effects of cold, different opinions 

 had very generally prevailed among all classes. In the 

 human subject, as in most of the higher order of animals, 

 Nature prompted the parent to maintain and secure for her 

 offspring a warm and genial atmosphere. Some regarded 

 the custom, arising from this feeling, as founded on erro- 

 neous and vulgar prejudices, and accordingly recommended 

 the practices of those persons who enveloped their new-born 

 infants in snow, even during the severest winter, as among 

 the best means of hardening the constitution. 



The earliest observations recorded, in refutation of this 

 theory, were made by Dr. Heberdeen.f Taking the aggre- 

 gate of the monthly mortality in London for fifteen years, 

 from 1728 to 1743, the different fluctuations, at particular 

 seasons, were strikingly exemplified. The deaths, at the 

 two extremes of life, under 2 years, and above 60, occurred 

 during the months of January, February, and March, which 

 were generally the coldest. Milne Edwards, from calcula- 

 tions made in France, during the year 1818, of the number 

 of deaths at Dunkirk and Toulon (between which places 

 there was a difference of temperature of about degrees 

 cent.) it appeared that in the north the number of deaths to 

 births were in the ratio of one to ten — in the south as one 

 to seven. In 1819, the difference was one to nine, north — 

 one to eleven south. On a more extended average, includ- 

 ing the whole of France, he arrived at pretty nearly the 

 same result. Additional evidence, in illustration of the 

 injurious influence of cold in infancy, might be gathered 

 from the habits and customs of different countries : for 

 example, M. Loaldo, a Roman Catholic priest, of Padua, 

 after alluding to the dangerous, and often fatal, conse- 

 quences of certain religious ceremonies — such as taking 



* Fourth Annual Report of the Registrar.General of Births, &c. 

 f Philosophical Transactions, vol. 86. 



