THE PRESENT EVOLUTION OF MAN — PHYSICAL 283 



although it still remained two or three times greater 

 than among the people at large. During a period of 

 eleven years (1869-79) the mortality in the prisons of 

 Prussia was 42'87 per cent, of the deaths from all 

 causes, and 12'32 per 1000 prisoners. 



"For England we have Baly's report on the pre- 

 valence of phthisis from 1825 to 1842 among the 

 convicts at Millbank Penitentiary, where 31 out of 205 

 deaths were due to cholera, and 75 of the remaining 

 174, or 43 per cent., were due to phthisis ; while of 355 

 prisoners discharged during the same period on account 

 of ill-health, 90 were phthisical, and of these quite three- 

 fifths, according to precedent, would have died of that 

 disease if they had been left to complete their term. 

 In that way we bring the annual mortality from 

 phthisis at Millbank up to 13 per 1000, or more than 

 three times that of the London population at large. 

 Pietra Santa gives the following facts for the prisons 

 of Algiers : — Of 23 natives who died in the public 

 prison of Alger, 17 succumbed to phthisis; in the 

 central prison of I'Harrach there were 57 deaths from 

 phthisis in a total of 153, or 37'2 per cent. The im- 

 portant influence of imprisonment on the occurrence of 

 this disease is very clearly brought out by its prevalence 

 in those regions where phthisis is in general a rare 

 thing, as, for example, in Lower Bengal. Webb quotes 

 the following remarks by Green with reference to the 

 commonness of the disease among the natives in the 

 prison of Midnapore : ' After a careful examination into 

 the early history and origin of the cases of this disease 

 as they have occurred, I have been led to the conclusion 

 that many of the men thus affected were previously 

 hale, and capable of earning their livelihood, and were 

 not subject to cough before imprisonment. I find that 

 after they have been working a few weeks or months 

 on the roads here, and inhabiting the jail, they have 

 become the subjects of attacks of inflammation of the 

 lungs, and from time to time of frequent repetition of 

 these attacks, which have ended in some cases .... 

 in death in the acute stage, in others in a prostrate 

 sinking state with a gradual wasting away of the body, 



