June 23, 1881] 



NATURE 



175 



the curve. Whilst this result is doubtless largely due to 

 complications with bowel complaint:, it is, as an exami- 

 nation of the statistics shows, in no small degree caused 

 by the direct influence of the great summer heat of New 

 York on the nervous centres. This is impressively shown 

 by the mortality curve for the whole of the nervous 

 diseases (Fig. 25), which is even more pronounced in this 

 particular than the curve for convulsions alone (Fig. 24). 

 Keeping this fact in view, the peaks showing an increased 

 fatality in London from cephalitis (Fig. 18) and suicides 

 (Fig. 19) during July and August acquire, in the eyes of 

 the physician, a more impressive significance. 



The curve for the whole mortality (Fig. 4, Nature, 

 vol. xxiv. p. 144) shows September and October to be 

 two of the healthiest months of the year. The three 

 curves, scarlet fever (Fig. 26), typhoid (Fig. 27), and 

 diphtheria (Fig. 28), are the most striking exceptions to 

 this, these curves all indicating either a large increase in 

 the death-rate or a high mortality during these months. 

 While closely related to each other, each of these three 



diseases has a distinct individuality of its own as re- 

 gards the times of occurrence of the annual maxima and 

 minima, and the varying amplitudes of their range from 

 the mean line. It is a singular circumstance that diph- 

 theria shows closer relations in its death-rate with typhoid 

 than with scarlet fever. 



Several other diseases suggest close alliances with each 

 other through their seasonal death rates. Thus the curve 

 for mortification is substantially that of nervous diseases, 

 and the curves for erysipelas and puerperal fever are in all 

 essential respects the same, a fact of singular suggestive- 

 ness to the family practitioner. The curve for old age is 

 exactly parallel to that of paralysis, the old man's disease. 

 The curves for skin diseases, rheumatism, dropsy, peri- 

 carditis, Bright's disease, and kidney disease exhibit most 

 striking, and in many cases the closest alliances with each 

 other. Lastly, while bowel complaints attain their greatest 

 mortaUty when the temperature is highest, diseases of the 

 respiratory organs when it is lowest, nervous diseases 

 during the dry weather of spring and early summer, and 



Fig. 2g. — The Great Plague of London. 



skin diseases and certain fevers during the raw weather 

 of autumn and early winter, such diseases as ileus, that 

 are quite removed from weather influences, exhibit curves 

 which show no obedience whatever to season, but only a 

 succession of sharp, irregular serratures resembling the 

 teeth of a saw. 



Atrophy and debility are most fatal to the very young in 

 summer, but to the aged in winter ; in the former case 

 the complication being with bowel complaints, and in the 

 latter with diseases of the respiratory organs. The annals 

 of influenza show that a special character is given to this 

 epidemic according to the season of the year in which it 

 occurs. Thus when it occurs in spring the head and 

 nervous system are most affected, but the bowels when the 

 epidemic prevails in summer and autumn. 



Fig. 29 shows by the doubly-dotted Hne, or highest 

 curve, the weekly mortality of London during the Great 

 Plague of 1665, the lower dotted curve the mean weekly 

 mortality of the last six plagues, and the solid curve the 

 mean weekly mortality from all other diseases during the 

 continuance of the last six plagues. The manner in which 

 the plague, as a death-producer, obeyed the weather is 

 striking, and full of interest. It did so exactly in the way 

 in which we have seen bowel complaints to be influenced 

 by weather. The curve of mortality for the plague bears 

 no resemblance whatever to that for typhus, or indeed any 

 other disease except bowel complaints. The fact that 



the progress of deaths from plague in relation to weather 

 resembles so closely the corresponding progress of deaths 

 from bowel complaints raises the question whether there 

 may not be a closer alliance between them than has been 

 suspected. If we are correct in regarding such a question 

 as a fair outcome of this investigation of the relations of 

 weather and health, it results that such investigations 

 may occasionally point to a seat of morbid processes 

 which have been cloaked by prominent phenomena, 

 apparently of a primary, but in reality of a secondary 

 character. ALEXANDER BUCHAN 



NOTES 



The death of Sir Josiah Mason on the i5th inst., at the 

 advanced age of eighty-six, closes a remarkable career. Born at 

 Kidderminster in humble circumstances, he began life as a street 

 hawker of cakes, and after trial of shoemaking, baking, and a 

 variety of other things in his native place, he went to Birmmg- 

 ham and found employment in the gilt toy trade. In 1824 he 

 set up on his own account as a manufacturer of split-rings by 

 machinery, and he afterwards added the manufacture of stee 

 pens, of %\hich he became really the largest producer, though 

 less known _than Gillott and Mitchell, owing to his pens being 

 supplied by Messrs. Perry of London. He shares the credit o 

 perfecting the modern steel pen, the history of which practically 



