/ & Hitman Physiology. 



not die. In a state of nature, ninety-nine hundredths of all 

 animals born would live out their natural lives, if they were 

 not shortened by violence. Among men, from one-third to 

 one-half die in infancy, and in many places the average life is 

 but one-fourth or one-fifth of what nature intended. If natural 

 selection has brought the human species to this condition, a 

 reversion to some anterior type would be progress in the right 

 direction. Mr. Darwin cannot think that our monkey ances- 

 tors had such bad luck with their babies. 



A report of the Registrar-General tells us that ** of the 

 deaths in England in 1859, no less than 184,264 two in 

 every five of the deaths of the year were of children under 

 five years of age; and above half of these 105,629 had 

 'Scarcely seen the light, and never saw one return of their 

 birthday." 



More recent reports put the infant mortality of the kingdom 

 -at 43 to 45 in 100. It is probable that the infant mortality of 

 England exceeds that of any country in the civilised world. 

 And the published statistics are below the facts ; for, there can 

 t>e no doubt that thousands of infants perish whose remains 

 are never discovered Multitudes of the still-born are never 

 recorded. By accident or design, or, as the result of men's 

 disordered passions, there is ever going on a vast destruction 

 of human life, in its earliest stages, such as does not exist in 

 any other species; for of man alone can it be said, "Sin 

 came, and death by sin." 



But the recorded mortality in infancy is sufficiently terrible. 

 In the ten years, 1851-60 four million deaths were recorded 

 for England and Wales, and of these nearly two millions 

 occurred in children under five years of age. 



The destruction of infant, as of adult life, is enormously 

 greater in some places, and in some classes, than in others; 

 and in this view of the evil, we have a full grasp of the remedy. 

 We have only to raise the worst places, and the lowest classes, 



