4 08 Of the Checks to Population Bk. ii. 



time of these calculations less healthy than at 

 present. Dr. William Heberden observes, that 

 the registers of the ten years from 1759 to 1768,* 

 from which Dr. Price calculated the probabilities 

 of life in London, indicate a much greater degree 

 of unhealthiness than the registers of late years. 

 And the returns pursuant to the Population Act, 

 even after allowing for great omissions in the 

 burials, exhibit in all our provincial towns, and in 

 the country, a degree of healthiness much greater 

 than had before been calculated. At the same 

 time I cannot but think that 1 in 31, the propor- 

 tion of mortality for London mentioned in the 

 Observations on the Results of the Population Act,-\ 

 is smaller than the truth. Five thousand are not 

 probably enough to allow for the omissions in the 

 burials ; and the absentees in the employments 

 of war and commerce are not sufficiently adverted 

 to. In estimating the proportional mortality the 

 resident population alone should be considered. 



There certainly seems to be something in great 

 towns, and even in moderate towns, peculiarly 

 unfavourable to the very early stages of life ; and 

 the part of the community, on which the mortality 

 principally falls, seems to indicate that it arises 

 more from the closeness and foulness of the air, 

 which may be supposed to be unfavourable to the 

 tender lungs of children, and the greater confine- 

 ment which they almost necessarily experience, 



* Increase and Decrease of Diseases, p. 32, 4to. 1801. 

 fP. 13. 



