246 HISTOEICAL RACES 



mortality in the Middle Ages than in the times of the Early- 

 Empires. All we know is that it was in both cases an important 

 factor of elimination. Within the last century disease has come 

 to be in an increasing degree under the control of scientific methods. 

 Some diseases such as small-pox have been almost banished from 

 this country ; others, such as diphtheria, have been rendered less 

 lethal. Of the Early Empires there are of course no exact facts. 

 Macdonell, working on figures from the Corpus Inscriptionum 

 Latinarum of the Berlin Academy, found that there was a very 

 low expectation of life in ancient Rome as compared with the 

 present day. Whereas in England ai the age of fifteen the expecta- 

 tion of life for boys is forty-five years and for girls forty-eight 

 years, in Rome it was twenty and fifteen years respectively ; 

 and again, whereas in England at the age of thirty the expecta- 

 tion of life for men is thirty-three, and for women thirty-six years, 

 in Rome it was nineteen and fourteen respectively. He also found 

 that, though the death-rate was less high, the position was much 

 the same in the provinces of Hispania and Lusitania as in Rome. 

 In Africa, however, the expectation of life was higher, but this 

 may perhaps be due to the presence of a large number of colonists.^ 

 There is abundant evidence of a high rate of mortality in Europe 

 up to the opening of the last century. We must remember, 

 says Rogers, that ' in the Middle Ages the risks of death from 

 disease were far greater than they are at present, that medical 

 skill was almost non-existent, that the conditions of life were 

 eminently unwholesome, that the diet of the people, during fully 

 one-half of the year, though abundant, was insalubrious ' ; ^ and 

 in another place he says that ' in the large towns the deaths, to 

 judge from the return up to the eighteenth century, greatly 

 exceeded the births '.^ Theilhaber, quoting Goldstein, gives 

 figures which corroborate this view for Basel and Frankfort.'* 

 Halley constructed one of the earliest tables of mortality for the 

 city of Breslau for the years 1687 to 1691, and they show that the 

 mortality was ' considerably higher than that shown by modern 

 statistics '.^ Price constructed a table for Northampton for the 

 years 1735 to 1780, and it shows a death-rate of 249-31 per 

 thousand for the ages 0-2, which is far higher than at the present 

 day.^ 



1 Macdonell, Biometrika, vol. ix, p. 369. ^ Rogers, loc. cit., vol. i, p. 118. 



3 Ibid., p. 336. » Theilhaber, 7)«s^ slerilp Berlin, p. 27. ° Henderson, 



Mortality Laws and Statistics, p. 3. " Ibid., pp. 4, 110. 



