322 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. 



articles of diet; and, most important of all, the spreading out of the 

 population over a much wider area, enabling large numbers of per- 

 sons to live under far more healthy conditions all, as we have seen, 

 occurring simultaneously, and effecting this most fundamental 

 change within the half century from 1775 to 1825, are in their com- 

 bination amply sufficient to account for that remarkable decrease of 

 mortality, not, as the Royal Commissioners suggest, pre-eminently 

 in small-pox, but in all the more important diseases, which especially 

 characterized this period. This is strikingly shown by Dr. Farr's 

 table printed in the Third Report (p. 198), of which the portion that 

 especially concerns us is here given. It shows us for two periods, 

 1771-80 and 1801-10, the deaths per one hundred thousand living 

 from the more important diseases. 



1771-80. 1801-10. 



Fourteen infantile diseases 1682 789 



Small-pox, 502 204 



Fevers 621 264 



Consumption, 1121 716 



Dropsy 225 113 



Here we see that, in the thirty years from 1775 to 1805, a change oc- 

 curred which reduced the mortality from all the chief diseases to half, 

 or less than half, their previous amount. Small-pox no doubt shows 

 the largest decrease; but as it is a decrease w r hich was mainly effected 

 before vaccination was heard of, that operation cannot have been its 

 cause. 1 Now, the remarkable feature of this diminution of mortality 

 is, that in no similar period between 1629, when the Bills of Mortality 

 began, down to the present year, has there been anything like it. And 

 the same may said cf the causes that led to it. Never before or 

 since has there been such an important change in the food of the 

 people, or such a rapid spreading out of the crowded population over 

 a much larger and previously unoccupied area; and these two 

 changes are, I submit, when taken in conjunction with the sanitary 

 improvements in the city itself, and the much greater facilities of 

 communication between the town and country around, amply suffi- 

 cient to account for the sudden and unexampled improvement in the 

 general health, as indicated by the great reduction of the death-rate 

 from all the chief groups of diseases, including small-pox. 



1 The decrease is probably exaggerated, owing to the confusion of measles with 

 small-pox. Measles shows an increased mortality in the above period from forty- 

 eight to ninety -four, and as it increased through the whole of the Bills of Mortality 

 it was probably being slowly differentiated from small -pox. 



