308 Observations on Bills of Mortality. 



any country, but being merely accidental ought not to swell the 

 regular bills, although it may be proper to note in an extra column 

 the number cut off by it. The same may be said of influenza, 

 or any other epidemic. In Philadelphia, nine hundred and forty- 

 eight persons died of cholera in the year 1832. I found the sin- 

 gular item, " died abroad," only in the bill of mortality for Mar- 

 blehead, in Massachusetts, for 1823, between which year and 

 that of 1801, the number amounted to one hundred and fifty- 

 four. The London bills, inserted in the Annual Register until 

 within five or six years, record among the causes of deaths, 

 '• headmold-shot" and "horseshoe-head."* The deaths in the 

 alms-houses ought also to be excluded. I am authorized to say, 

 that nineteen of twenty of the diseases causing these deaths in 

 the Philadelphia alms-house, originated from the intemperate use 

 of ardent spirits, and besides that very many of the victims con- 

 sist of vagabonds, who had no legal residence in the city or 

 county of Philadelphia, but may have recently come from Eu- 

 rope, from other states, or the interior of this state, and having 

 been found destitute or sick, are sent to the great depot on the 

 principle of humanity. The deaths in the county prison and in 

 the eastern penitentiary are inserted in the annual bills, and since 

 the year 1837 the interments from the county of Philadelphia 

 are made to increase the annual sum total. Now as the solitary 

 cells in which the prisoners are confined are all above ground, 

 and are dry and warm, and the prisoners perform just so much 

 light labor as promotes health, and have wholesome food, the con- 

 clusion is, that their diseases, with very few exceptions, are the 

 result of previous irregular lives ; at least they are not the effects 

 of solitary confinement. 



To show how greatly the items objected to swell the sum 

 total of the bills of mortality, I will state that in the year 

 1820 they amounted to 317, total mortality being 3,374 

 1824 " " " 603, " " " 4,399 



1828 " " " 618, " " " 4,292 



1832 " " " 1,577, " " " 6,699 



* Headmold-shot is a disease in children, in which the sutures of the skull, usu- 

 ally the coronal, ride, that is, when their edges shoot over one another, and are so 

 close locked as to compress the brain, often occasioning convulsions and death. 



Horseshoe-head is also an infantile disease, opposite to headmold-shot; the sutures 

 of the skull being loo o^en.— Webster's Dictionary, 1841. 



