NOTES AND 



land from the continent about 1509, prior to which most of the preseat produce 

 of k itchen gardens was imported from the Netherlands. 



NOTE 38. 



The comparative mortality of London has not only greatly diminished withic 

 the last fifty or sixty years, but a number of diseases which, previous to that pe- 

 riod, were very destructive, have almost entirely disappeared ; for instance, the 

 plague, the rickets, and the scurvy : while others that were formerly considered 

 very mortal, are now viewed as no longer formidable ; such as the small pox t 

 the dysentery and intermittent fevers. 



Other diseases, supposed to be less dependent on the physical than on the 

 moral and political changes which Great Britain has undergone, have increased in 

 number and fatality ; and are attributed, chiefly, to the increase of manufactures ; 

 and, consequently, of the number of sedentary and otherwise unwholesome oc- 

 cupations : to the augmentation of the national wealth, and with it, of luxury 

 and high feeding ; and to the fluctuations in the conditions of life, attendant on 

 the spirit of commercial speculation. To the first of these sources is ascribed, in 

 part, the regular increase of the consumption, during the last century ; to the 

 second, the more inconsiderable, but scarcely less regular, increase of apoplexy, 

 palsy, gout, and sudden deaths ; and to the last, the more frequent occurrence of 

 insanity in its different forms : and the increase of intemperance and vice, in a 

 large and populous city, doubtless contributes much to the augmentation of all 

 these diseases. 



Dr. Heberden states the proportion of these three classes? of disease, at the be- 

 ginning, middle, and end, of the eighteenth ceutur}', to have been as follows 



If we compare the mortality from consumption, at those three periods, with the 

 total mortality, we find, that in 1669 the deaths, from consumption, were, to the 

 rvhole, as, 



