142 THE PRINCIPLES OF HEREDITY 



phthisis was 12*82 per 1,000 prisoners of Philadelphia, and at 

 Auburn and Boston 8*89 and 1078 respectively ; in Baltimore 

 prison it was 61 per cent, of the mortality from all causes. In 

 the French prisons, particularly those in which long terms of 

 penal servitude are worked out, the death-rate from phthisis 

 amounts to between 30 and 50 per cent, of the mortality from all 

 causes. In the Dutch prisons it reaches the same height ; in 

 the Danish convict prisons it amounted in 1863-9 to 38 per 

 cent, of all deaths ; over the whole of the prisons of the 

 Austrian Empire in 1877-80 it was 61*3 per cent. ; and in the 

 nine large convict prisons in Bavaria from 1868 to 1875 it 

 was 38*2 per cent. In the present establishments of Wurt- 

 emburg, according to Cless, the yearly average of deaths from 

 phthisis from 1850 to 1858 was 24 per 1,000 ; while from 

 1858 to 1876, in consequence of the improved diet, it fell as 

 we have seen to 8 per 1,000, although it still remains two or 

 three times greater than among the people at large. During a 

 period of eleven years (1869-79) the mortality in the prisons 

 of Prussia was 42*87 per cent, of the deaths from all causes, and 

 12-32 per 1,000 prisoners. 



229. " For England we have Baley's report on the prevalence 

 of phthisis from 1825 to 1842 among the convicts at Milbank 

 Penitentiary, where 31 out of 205 deaths were due to cholera, 

 and 75 of the remaining 174, or 43 per cent., were due to 

 phthisis ; while of 355 prisoners discharged during the same 

 period on account of ill-health, 90 were phthisical, and of 

 these quite three-fifths according to precedent would have 

 died of that disease if they had been left to complete their 

 term. In that way we may bring the annual mortality from 

 phthisis at Milbank up to 13 per 1,000, or more than three 

 times that of the London population at large. Pietra Santa 

 gives the following facts for the prisons of Algeria : Of 23 

 natives who died in the public prisons of Alger, 17 succumbed 

 to phthisis ; in the central prison of 1'Harrach there were 57 

 deaths from phthisis in a total of 153, or 37*2 per cent. The 

 important influence of imprisonment on the occurrence of 

 this disease is very clearly brought out by its prevalence in 

 those regions in which phthisis is in general a rare thing, as, 

 for example, in Lower Bengal. Webb quotes the following 

 remarks by Green with reference to the commonness of the 

 disease among the natives in the prison of Midnapore : * After 

 a careful examination into the early history and origin of the 

 cases of this disease as they have occurred, I have been led 

 to the conclusion that many of the men thus affected were 

 previously hale, and capable of earning their livelihood, and 



