308 Observations on Bills of Mortality. 
any country, but being merely accidental ought not to swell the 
regular bills, although it may be proper to note in-an extra column 
the number cut off by it. The same may be said of influenza, 
or any other epidemic. In Philadelphia, nine hundred and forty- 
eight persons died of cholera in the year 1832. I found the sin- 
gular item, ‘ died abroad,” only in the bill of mortality for Mar- 
blehead, in Massachusetts, for 1823, between which. year and 
that of 1801, the number amounted to one hundred and fifty- 
four, The London bills, inserted in the Annual Register until 
within five or six years, record among the causes of deaths, 
“ headmold-shot” and.“ horseshoe-head.’** The deaths in the 
alms-houses ought also to be excluded. I am authorized to say, 
that nineteen of twenty of the diseases causing these deaths in 
the Philadelphia alms-house, originated from the intemperate use 
of ardent spirits, and besides that very many of the victims con- 
sist of vagabonds, who had no legal residence inthe city ot 
county of Philadelphia, but may have recently come from Eu- 
rope, from other states, or the interior of this state, and having 
been found destitute or sick, are sent to the great depot on the 
principle of humanity. The deaths in the county prison and in 
the eastern penitentiary are inserted in the annual bills, and since 
the year 1837 the interments from the county of Philadelphia 
are made to increase the annual sum total. Now as the solitary 
cells in which the prisoners are confined are ‘all above ground; 
and are dry and warm, and the. prisoners perform just so much 
light labor as promotes health, and have wholesome food, the con- 
clusion i is, that their diseases, with very few exceptions, are the 
result of previous irregular lives; at least they are not the effects 
of solitary confinement ) 
To show how greatly the items objected to swell the sum 
she of the bills of mortality, I will state that in the year . 
820 they amounted t . 317, ven mortality. Dare 3,374 
‘ee & 4 603, “ 4,399 
1828 « “ ee ca ‘“c kite 292 
18, 
: 1832 « fas te 1,577, ee “ die 6,699 
aes, 
% * Headmold-shot i is a diene i in chilaed in which the sutures of the skull, es 
ally the coronal, | ride, that rte when thei thei r a over one another, and are 
pip nae as to ee d-death: 
— 
& she a nat hiss ee, a ee 
a 
% PEE i [Ae 
wo? 
