420 ON THE ORIGIN, PROPAGATION, 



occupation, in entering the married state, or through 

 other modes of free action, rendered them unsuitable 

 for the purpose he had in view. Cornet's inquiry ex- 

 tended over a quarter of a century. The returns fur- 

 nished by thirty-eight hospitals served by Catholic 

 sisters and brethren, and embracing a yearly average of 

 4,020 attendants, showed the number of deaths during 

 the period mentioned to be 2,099. Of these, 1,320 

 were caused by tuberculosis. In the State, as a whole, 

 the proportion of deaths from this malady to the total 

 number of deaths is known to be very high, reaching 

 from one-fifth to one-seventh of the whole. In the 

 hospitals this proportion was enormously increased. It 

 rose on the average to almost two-thirds, or close upon 

 63 per cent, of the total number of deaths. In nearly 

 half the hospitals even this high proportion was sur- 

 passed, the deaths in these amounting to three-fourths 

 of the whole. Scarcely any other occupation, however 

 injurious to health, shows a mortality equal to that 

 found in these hospitals. 



The following statistics furnish a picture of the 

 state of things prevalent during the five-and-twenty 

 years referred to. A healthy girl of 17, devoting her- 

 self to hospital nursing, dies on the average 21 J years 

 sooner than a girl of the same age moving among the 

 general population. A hospital nurse of the age of 25 

 has the same expectation of life as a person of the age 

 of 58 in the general community. The age of 33 years 

 in the hospital is of the same value as the age of 62 in 

 common life. The difference between life-value in the 

 hospital and life-value in the State increases from the 

 age of 17 to the age of 24; nurses of this latter age 

 dying 22 years sooner than girls of the same age in the 

 outside population. The difference afterwards becomes 

 less. In the fifties it amounts to only six or seven 



