The Necessity of Pure Air For HEALtH. 261 



no doubt to bad registration. From a careful analysis 

 of the figures I have found 7*5 per thousand to be the 

 approximate number of deaths in Georgetown due to this 

 disease. This is as high a rate as occurs in any part of 

 the world and is a terrible number when it is remem- 

 bered that it is a preventable disease, the main fa6lor in 

 whose produftion is over-crowding and impure air. 

 Georgetown is over-crowded, as crowded as London in 

 some parts. In Georgetown there are from 50 to 53 

 persons to each acre of land so that each person has 

 only 96 square yards of ground space. The mortality 

 varies from 28 to 32 per thousand per annum. In 

 London in places with 32 square yards for each 

 person, the mortality is 277 ; with 102 square yards 

 the mortality falls to 24*5 and with 202 square yards 

 per inhabitant, the death rate only reaches 20 per 

 thousand. 



Phthisis, as I have said, has now come to be recognised 

 as a preventable disease caused principally by over- 

 crowding ; other fa6lors no doubt aid in their own way, 

 but impure air is the main one. This has been demon- 

 strated beyond question over and over again from the 

 Equator to the North Pole, so that I need only give one 

 illustration and it is a charafteristic one. In a badly 

 ventilated prison in Vienna 378 prisoners died in 

 one year out of a total of 4,280 inhabitants. This 

 is a mortality of 85 per 1000, and of this number no 

 less than 51 per 1000 died of phthisis. While in 

 the well ventilated House of Correftion in the same 

 city in the same year and under the same general 

 condition as regards other foods and so on, only 

 43 died out of 3,037 prisoners or 14 per thousand, and of 



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