125 



The assigned causes of death are given in the margin, also the 

 deviations in weight of the lungs, heart and liver, occasioned by 

 disease. 



The following general results may be deduced from the first series 

 of cases, namely, those occurring among the Poor of the Parish of 

 Marylebone. 



With few exceptions the body and internal organs arrived at their 

 full size in both sexes between twenty and thirty years. In children 

 especially, the body was attenuated from disease : for example, one 

 scrofulous female child, aged three years, weighed only 8^ Ibs., and 

 the numbers about that age were insufficient to counterbalance the 

 effect of such cases on the mean result, and form a standard of com- 

 parison for children of the same age under more favourable circum- 

 stances. The average weight of the males was greatest at from 

 70 to 80 years, which is to be accounted for by the large pro- 

 portion cut off at earlier periods by pulmonary phthisis. The 

 mean weight of the male brain was, at all periods, above that of the 

 female, which was the probable cause of the large number of still- 

 born male infants as compared with females, 51 to 32, and 

 the necessity of resorting to craniotomy in five instances of the 

 former only. The highest average weight of the brain in both sexes 

 was from 1 4 to 20 years ; the next highest was in the males from 

 30 to 40, and in the females from 20 to 30 years ; but it will be 

 observed that the cases were much fewer in number in these than 

 in other later periods. The weight of the lungs was so much, 

 and so frequently increased by disease, that healthy lungs were 

 exceptions : it therefore appeared advisable to introduce in the 

 margin their weights in various states, also the weights of the heart 

 and liver, which were subject to great variations. The " Thymus 

 gland," an organ which disappears with infancy, was so large in the 

 foetus in fourteen cases, that it appeared to have formed a fatal im- 

 pediment to respiration. The abdominal organs were generally 

 heavier in the male than in the female; the spleen in both was 

 subject to considerable variations in size, and the mean weight of 

 the left kidney was generally found greater than that of the right. 



The general results obtained from a review of the second series 

 of cases are stated by the author as follows : 



The average height of the adult male varied from 67'8 to 65 



