568 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [anNO 1774. 



ness ; especially if we consider that the deaths are much more exactly registered 

 than the births. In the present bill, the number of children, who died after 

 receiving only private baptism, in consequence of which their deaths were 

 registered, but not their births, amounts to ] 7 ; which might therefore be added 

 to the average of christenings for the last 3 years, and will form an extraordinary 

 instance of healthiness and increase. The present bill also takes in the separate 

 registers kept by different societies, in which the births much exceed the burials, 

 as many of the latter are entered at the parish church. 



The melancholy overbalance of burials, which now appears, plainly arises 

 from the dreadful ravages of a single disease, the small-pox ; which perhaps has 

 seldom raged with greater malignity than in its late visitation of this town. Its 

 victims were chiefly young children ; whom it attacked with such instant fury, 

 that the best-directed means for relief were of little avail. The state of the air 

 went through all possible variations in the course of it, but with no perceptible 

 difference in the state of the disease. In general, the sick were kept sufficiently 

 cool, and were properly supplied with diluting and acidulous drinks ; yet where 

 they recovered, it seemed rather owing to a less degree of malignity in the 

 disease, or greater strength to struggle with it, than any peculiar management. 

 Where it ended fatally, it was usually before the pustules came to maturation ; 

 and indeed in many they showed no disposition to advance after the complete 

 eruption, but remained quite flat and pale. In one neighbourhood, out of 

 29 who had the disease, 12 died, or about 2 in 5 ; in others the mortality was 

 still greater, and there is reason to believe it was not less on the whole. It may 

 perhaps be worthy of observation that the proportion of females who died, to 

 males, was nearly as 3 to 2. While we lament the severity of the scourge 

 with which we have been afflicted, we cannot but highly regret, that a practice, 

 which experience has established as so effectual a security against it, was so 

 little followed. Not 10 were inoculated in the whole town and neighbourhood: 

 these all did well, yet their example was not sufficient to overcome some acci- 

 dental prejudices taken against it. 



General Bill for 1773. 

 Marriages. Births. Burials. 



Males 175 ?„,^ Males 223? .__ 

 93 Females 181 S Females 250$ '^'*- 



Of these 473 deaths, 211 were by the small-pox. 

 XLIF. Of the Stilling of TFaves by Means of Oil. Extracted jfrom sundry 



Letters between Benj. Franklin, LL. D., F. R. S., fVm. Brownrigg, M. D., 



F. R. S., and the Rev. Mr. Parish, p. 445. 



This paper may be consulted in Dr. Franklin's works, collected and published 

 in IB06, in 3 vols. 8vo. see p. 144, vol. 2. 



