Observations on Bills of Mortality. 307 



noticed in the general result of an annual bill of mortality, ex- 

 cept those which are incident to mortality in all countries, from 

 internal or constitutional causes, or which may be fairly ascribed 

 to or are influenced by climate ; all others being merely adven- 

 titious ought to be excluded. If it should be thought necessary 

 to record the precise number of persons who finish their mortal 

 career in any place, a column might be specially appropriated to 

 these extraneous causes of death, and such an improvement I 

 suggested several years since for the bills of mortality in Phila- 

 delphia, but without effect.* 



The items which J. think ought to be omitted in the regular 

 columns of all bills of mortality, are burns, childbed, contusions, 

 casualties, drowned, drunkenness, fractures of all parts of the 

 body, hemorrhage, intemperance, inanition, injury of the head, of 

 the brain, of the spine, of the hip ; duels, laudanum, mania a 

 potu, (madness from rum,) found dead, murdered, syphilis, still- 

 born, small-pox, varioloid, suicide, unknown, neglect. These 

 items are taken from the Philadelphia bills. I add hanged, Asia- 

 tic cholera, (which was included in the Philadelphia bills for the 

 year 1832,) any other epidemic, deaths from the almshouse and 

 prisons, which are included in the Philadelphia bills, and " died 

 abroad." 



The inutility of specifying particular fractures and injuries in 

 separate lines, and of giving one line to each special fracture 

 causing death, and separate lines to drunkenness, intemperance, 

 and mania a potu, must be obvious upon a moment's reflection. 

 The two first ought to be included in the hue or column for 

 "casualties," and the three last placed in one line after the head 

 "alcohol." "Laudanum," " morphine to excess," and "poison- 

 ing," should be in one line after the last head. Malignant chol- 

 era "comes we know not how, it goes we know not where ;"f 

 and therefore cannot be claimed exclusively as an indigene by 



" Since writing the foregoing, I find by reference to the British Annual Register, 

 that in the Edinburgh bills, there is a column with the head '•' casualties," and 

 comprises all those deaths which may be properly arranged under it. 



t We know that it first appeared in the army of the Marquis of Hastings, in 

 the year 1817, when encamped during a military expedition in the sandy soil, and 

 under the burning sun of Bengal, and that it visited Europe and North America, 

 unaffected by the cold of Russia, the moisture of England, the dry climate of 

 France, or the variable climates of Canada and the United States. In 1836, it 

 prevailed in Italy, and since that year I have not heard of it. 



