CHAPTER II. 



VITAL STATISTICS. 



It is conceded that tlie numbers of all the living in the United States 

 are, with inconsiderable exceptions, included in the returns of the 8th 

 and the 9th Census. Most strenuous efforts were made at these dates to 

 obtain a complete enumeration of those who died during the census years 

 of 1860 and 1870. On an inspection of the returns, however, it was ad- 

 mitted that in no case did this enumeration approach the actual facts 

 nearer than by forty or forty-one per cent. Nor is it expected that much 

 greater accuracy will be attained by the results of the 10th Census. For 

 instance, the attention of the very intelligent enumerators in the city of 

 Charleston, in 1880, being called to the difficulty of obtaining accu- 

 racy in the mortality returns no pains were spared to accom- 

 plish all that was possible in this regard. The result of the enu- 

 meration made the death rate 2.01 per cent. The actual death rate 

 obtained from the very accurate city registration being 3.25 per cent. 

 A difference of about thirty-eight per cent. Even here it might be ques- 

 tioned, whether the enumeration or the registration was the more correct. 

 So rapidly does that universal solvent, death, obliterate the traces of the 

 things which pass from life, that all memor}' and record of their existence 

 vanishes with unexpected, not to say indecent, haste. The known and 

 numbered graves are as one grain to the sands of the sea-shore in com- 

 parison with the vast multitudes of the unrecorded dead. The intelli- 

 gence and power of mankind have been so actively engaged through all 

 ages of human progress in devising and perfecting means for the destruc- 

 tion of human life, that little of either has been left free to find employ- 

 jnent in the preservation of this obstacle to progress, and still less for 

 collecting and preserving facts concerning the entrances and the exits on 

 the stage of life, and of the ills and accidents which beset the living. 

 Without such data any opinion as to the comparative healthfulness of 

 populations and localities must be of the vaguest and most uncertain 



