COMFORT AND LONGEVITY. 545 
druggist’s, which was highly contaminated with organic matter. ‘The 
druggist’s well, moreover, is the source of most of the soda-water 
throughout the country, as well as in many cities where the water- 
rates are high. A person having a harmless disturbance of the 
bowels, arising from a cold, is just in the condition to succumb to the 
dysentery or typhoid-fever lurking in the medicine or Vichy-water 
from the too-much-trusted druggist. 
RAPHAEL PUMPELLY. 
COMFORT AND LONGEVITY. 
—____—__.¢—~ 
Josef Korési is the director of the Bureau of statistics in Buda- 
pest, and he has apparently brought to his work a mind well adapted 
to the difficult task of handling figures in bulk. The essay which he 
presents to us under the above title was read in September last, 
before the Association of hygiene in Berlin, and in it he has confined 
himself to a few points only. He has endeavoured to determine the 
influence which the varying pecuniary conditions of life, with their 
attendant privileges or privations, have upon the longevity of the 
people of his city. For convenience he recognizes four classes, accor- 
ding to their endowment in worldly goods; those who are very rich 
at one end of the category, and those who suffer from abject poverty 
at the other. Between these extremes lie the great mass of the 
people, whom he divides into the middle class and the ordinary poor. 
He does not claim that his figures possess an absolute mathematical 
value, because he could not determine the number of living 
individuals in each category; but by excluding children under five 
years of age, and taking the average age of those dying during a 
period of eight years, he found that 
The rich class averages tt 2. ce ... 52 years of life. 
The middle class averages tt a ... 46 years 1.1 months of life. 
The poor class averages... 4 ... 41 years 7 months of life. 
From this it is obvious that the possession of wealth, and the resultant 
exemption from privation, lengthen the average life nearly ten years. 
The second point which he studied was the relation existing 
between epidemic infectious diseases, and the pecuniary status of the 
different grades of the community. Upon this point he finds that 
poverty does not exercise a uniform influence upon the occurrence of 
these diseases: indeed, viewing them as a whole, the well-endowed, 
excepting the very richest, are more scriously afflicted than the poor. 
Viewing the infectious diseases separately, he finds that cholera, 
small-pox, measles, and typhus are more prevalent among the poor, 
while diphtheria, croup, whooping-cough, and scarlet fever are more 
prevalent among the rich. Consumption and pneumonia claim the 
poor, and brain-troubles attack the rich. 
In view of legislative action regarding the abodes of the poor, 
Korosi next studied the influence of basement tenements upon the 
Ueber den einfluss der wohlhabenhett und der wohnverhdltnisse auf sterblichkeit und 
todesursachen. Von JoseF Korési. Stuttgart, Enke, 1855. 8°. 
