1866. | and its National Danger. 317 
this term are the contagious and epidemic disorders—Typhus, 
Diarrhoea, Small-pox, &c.; and we are startled by the announce- 
ment that of the 17,282 deaths registered in 1865, 5,526 (or nearly 
one-third) are known to have resulted from zymotic diseases ; and 
of these 2,338 were “typhus and infantile fever ;’ and 1,016 from 
diarrhoea—the diseases which press closely in the wake of drunken- 
ness, debauchery (and that cause of both, overcrowding), as vultures 
follow the rear of a great demoralized army. 
Dr. Trench has been so diligent as to make up corrected 
averages of the last ten years, that is, he has corrected those 
averages to the population of 1865, “so that the figures at once 
show the comparative deaths to population,” and he has compared the 
deaths in 1865 with the average mortality of the past ten years. 
Here is the result, fearful in the present, ominous for the future, 
not of Liverpool alone but unless some sharp remedy be applied of 
the whole country. 
The total deaths in 1865. : ‘i ( c : 2 UL282 
Corrected average of the last ten years . - ‘ : . 15,538 
Total deaths from zymotic diseases in 1865 . ; : + 05026 
From the same diseases in 1864. : . 4,870 
Average deaths from the same during the last ten years - 4,062 
In other words, 656 persons died in Liverpool of contagious and 
epidemic diseases last year above the number who died of the same 
disorders in 1864; and 1,414 more than the average of the last ten 
years. Is there not in our land a gradually increasing, not a mere 
passing plague, more immediately dangerous to the locality in which 
it is bemg forced, but at the same time threatening to the whole 
community? If any one doubts this, let him study the growth of 
the pestilence in Liverpool, and he will find that it hag been 
gradually spreading its ravages and widening the sphere of its 
cankerous influences. In some portions of the town, however, its 
effect has become so intensified that the medical officer feels himself 
warranted in regarding and specifying them as ‘‘the fever districts 
of the borough ;” and if our readers will turn to the outline which 
we have sketched from the mortality map of the town that accom- 
panies his report, they will perceive how large a proportion of the 
whole area of the Parliamentary borough is embraced by these 
infected localities. The three shaded patches are the “Fever 
districts.” Lying midway between them is that portion of the 
town in which the trade of the port is conducted, and where its 
finest shop-streets are situated. Interspersed amongst these plague- 
patches are the noblest buildings in the borough ; the Exchange 
and ‘Town Hall, St. George’s Hall, the Railway Stations, and nearly 
all the other buildings of note, such as the market halls, &e. The 
uncoloured portions beyond are on a higher level, Everton being 
probably the highest, but almost up to the very brow of the hill, 
the fiend “ Fever” has made his home. 
