116 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



The advantages of our climate for salubrity consist mainly 

 in the dryness of the atmosphere, and the equability and mild- 

 ness of the temperature. Moisture combined with heat causes 

 fevers and pneumonia ; combined with cold it brings on con- 

 sumption. Malarial diseases and affections of the respiratory 

 organs, together, carry off a large part of our race, arid no- 

 where can the percentage of loss by them be brought to a 

 lower figure than in this State. In Massachusetts, 29 out of 

 100 deaths are caused by diseases of the respiratory organs ; in 

 Maine 27, in London 26, in Cuba 25, and in California 30 ; 

 but of these, few caught the disease in this State. All the au- 

 thorities agree, that conditions like those here prevalent are 

 the best for the prevention and cure of consumption. Blodgett, 

 in his work on climatology, expressed the opinion that not 

 more than four per cent, of the natives of California will die 

 of consumption ; and although he wrote nearly twenty years 

 ago, nothing has since occurred to show that he was wrong. 



87, Infant Mortality. An article published in the St 

 Paul's Medical Journal, in 1872, says, that of 365,508 deaths 

 reported by the Board of Health of New York citj 7 ", from 1 804 

 to 1853, 184,534, or more than 50 per cent., were children un- 

 der five years of age. The same percentage is observed in the 

 deaths of the same city in 1866, 1867, and 1869 ; in Chicago, 

 from 1843 to 1869, the proportion was 51 per cent. ; in Phila- 

 delphia, from 1858 to 1870, 45 per cent.; and in Baltimore, in 

 1860, 1861, 1862, 1865, and 1866, 47 per cent. Some of this 

 mortality is to be charged, undoubtedly, to constitutional 

 weakness, inherited from weak, diseased, dissipated, ill-fed, or 

 unhappy parents ; but far more is due to bad food, insufficient 

 care, defective ventilation, scanty clothing, and exposure to 

 wet and cold. The poor farmer who should lose hal'f his 

 sheep, pigs, or calves, under ordinary circumstances, would be 

 regarded as grossly ignorant, or careless ; but the rich inhabit- 

 ants of the cities generally lose about half their children by 

 death before maturity. 



