^0^ Mr. Corbaux on the Laws of Mortality, 



When tlie development is complete, and all additional sup- 

 ply of vigour has ceased, the ordinary exercise of life, even 

 without abuse, sufficiently accounts for the constant diminu- 

 tion of its intensity. Life, disengaged from the trammels qf 

 infancy, has its period of restlessness, toil and danger ; but 

 during which, nature is proportionately bountiful in other re- 

 spects. It next has a period characterized by compai'ative 

 calmness of the human passions, but its usual attendants are 

 the development of diseases which were only incipient, together 

 with an increased liability to other diseases ; and this is super- 

 seded by another period, of nearly absolute repose, in which 

 the character of prevailing diseases has changed, and which is 

 not incompatible with vigorous health. From the different 

 circumstances attendant on those periods, and on their re- 

 spective subdivisions, the ratio of progressive diminution in 

 the intensity of life is also different during each of them ; some- 

 times proceeding by increment, and at other times by decre- 

 ment, according to the ascertainable operation of combined 

 causes. 



To whatever class of selection any law of mortality may re- 

 fer, the intensity of a female is always superior to that of a male 

 life of similar age, until the anomalous period last mentioned ; 

 but from the characteristic difference already noticed, in the 

 respective conditions of their existence, this superiority is not 

 the same for every year of age. It is more considerable at the 

 birth than at any future period ; as evinced by the proportior^ 

 of about seven deaths occurring amongst females, to eight oc- 

 curring amongst males, during their first year, out of any equal 

 number of births of each sex and belonging to a select class. 

 This proportion of advantage, attributable to females, rapidly 

 decreases to the sixth or seventh year, more or less, and ac- 

 cording to the specific class ; it then ascends, in regular pro- 

 gression, until it attains a maximum at twenty-seven years of 

 age, or thereabouts ; after which a progressive decrease again 

 takes place, terminating with the forty-first year, when, with 

 reference also to a select class of lives, the respective intensities 

 are nearly on a level for both sexes. From the latter period, 

 the same superiority is manifested in a constantly increasing 

 progression to the seventy-fourth yeai", when only it com- 

 mences to decline ; and about the eighty-fourth, it ultimately 

 yields the advantage to male lives. 



If the comparative intensity of life, in both sexes, be not 

 considered relatively to, specific and successive ages, but in a 

 more absolute sense, as measurable by the respective averages 

 of forthcoming years at the birth, and usually, though impro- 

 perly, 



