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hydrocephalus^ teething^ hooping cough, measles^ croup, tabes 

 and worms ; those destroyed by convulsions being nearly 

 alike in number in both districts. That, during each of 

 these years, there were 850 more adults who died from con- 

 sumption in Leeds and Sheffield, 255 of typhus fever, 

 1,212 from pneumonia or inflammation of the lungs, a few 

 (113) from diseases of the brain, while the deaths from 

 disease of the digestive organs, and the convulsions of 

 children, are nearly the same in number in both districts. 

 I have, therefore, to account for the more numerous deaths 

 of children by epidemics ; those of adults chiefly from con- 

 sumption and inflammation of the lungs ; and a small number 

 from typhus fever and diseases of the brain. And it ought 

 to be found that the similarity of the physical condition of 

 the people of Halifax and Huddersfield, and also of Leeds 

 and Sheffield on the one hand, and the dissimilarity between 

 the two former and the two latter places on the other, will 

 be such, if correctly ascertained, as will represent the pre- 

 disposing causes to the particular diseases by which the 

 additional mortality is produced, and which, in a great 

 measure, will be found to depend upon the respective 

 Geological positions of these districts. 



1. The districts of Halifax and Huddersfield stand upon 

 the same open, friable, fissured millstone grit rocks, and 

 consequently have, 1st. The same natural drainage, and 

 this very much superior to that of the districts of Leeds 

 and Sheffield, which stand chiefly upon strata above the 

 flagstone, and which in both localities consist of clays and 

 binds disintegrating into tenacious wet soils. There is 

 abundant proof that good and efficient drainage exercises 

 a material influence over the propagation of epidemics, 

 and that the diffierence in the excellence of the draining 

 of the Halifax and Huddersfield districts, over that of the 

 Leeds and Sheffield, would be sufficient to account for the 



