The Express.
London, England, 1864-09-07 00:00:00

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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7.

THE REGISTRAH-GESEItiL has now for many
years been telling us regularly every week how we
die, and how this continual wearing out of the
human frame is met and more than compensated
by the gain of new lives over the deaths. The im-
portance which attaches to these returns in con-
nexion with the general subject of public health
and well-being has led to the parallel inquiry as to
how the Nation lives. While Dr. FARE furnished
the vital statistics in his vast array of dry figures,
irresistible in the logic they enforce, Mr. Stwow,
the Medical Officer of the Privy Council, gives an
account more practical and direct in its teaching
as to the destroying causes which are at work, and
at the same time points out the sources of im-
provement to be sought and made to counteract
the many hurtful agencies that surround the
workers in the great industrial hive. The
RECISTRAR-GENERAL affords an infallible indizator
of how the great human machine is performing its
work of life, where the friction is too great and
the strain too heavy ; the Medical Officer of
Health examines wheel within wheel of the com-
plex organism, to discover the fault in the
working.
The Report now just presented ranges from the
subject of infant mortality and vaccination, which
is taken to be one of the best means of protecting
the young growth of population, through the
whole dietetic economy of the labouring classed j
the inquiry being specially directed to the food
and mode of living amongst the poorer classes, to
• systematic investigation of the distribution of
disease in different sections of the community, the
circumstances by which that is regulated, and to the
outbreak of epidemics, with the local administra-
tion of the laws that apply to public health, the
economy of hospitals, and the disease peculiar to
those establishment/J.

For the last five years a continuous inquiry has
been maintained in all these directions, but during
last year a supplementary inquiry was begun by a
staff of medical officers, under Mr. SIMON'S direc-
tion, " as to the sufficiency with which the primary
" wants of the body are satisfied amongst the
" poorest classes, and in one very important par-
" ticular—of food, somewhat extensively con-
" ducted." Additional interest is given to the
Report from the inquiry having been made during
the time when the distress of the cotton-spinning
districts was at its height, and when subsistence
was reduced to the lowest level short of actual
starvation. Unhappily, however, if we consult the
tables of the Recisraaa-GarmaaLthere are generally
to be found some numbers to represent want of
food as the cause of death ; but there is nothing
here to remind us so directly of the pernicious in-
fluence which is acting perpetually, in degrees
far short of the starvation point, to produce
the germs and favour the growth of disease.
Dr. E. SMITH, the Inspector who was engaged in
the inquiry made respecting the condition of
Cheshire and Lancashire operatives in 1862, in
his Report gives the result of his investigations
throughout the kingdom, during which he visited
in England and Wales 553 households, in Scotland
29, and in Ireland 52. The Inspector appears to
have chiefly examined the state of the agricul-
tural poor, the Report referring only to 123 cases
of in-door occupations in towns, such as silk-
weavers, needlewomen, dressmakers and glove-
stitcher., stocking-weavers, shoemakers, tailors,
and printers. Dr. Serra, from his observations
in 1862, had assumed that the requisite amount
of nutriment to protect against starvation diseases
was for a woman about that contained in 21bs. of
good bread, and for a man about a ninth part
more. In scientific estimate the mean weekly need
of an adult should be 28.600 grains of carbon
and 1.330 of nitrogen, or so much of the former
in the form of vegetable food, sugar, beer, &c.,
and of the latter as meat, fish, and milk. In the
cases of in-door occupations mentioned the point
of bare sufficiency was not nearly reached by the
needlewomen and the silk-weavers, while the shoe-
makers just exceeded the lowest standard of
animal food, and the stocking-weavers came a
little below it—both, however, having rather more
than the indispensable amount of carbonaceous
food. But now comes the worse part of the Re-
port, since it refers to a much wider field of in-
vestigation in the agricultural population. Of
these more than a fifth were living upon
less than the estimated quantity of carbona-
oeous food necessary for healthy existence,
and a third on less than the quantity of animal
food, while iu Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and Somer-
setshire the average of animal food was insufficient.
Mr. Simon does not insist upon these being more
than " samples," and founded upon a theoretical
estimate. Still, as be acutely remarks, this
estimate shows a perfect agreement with the actual
consumption to which the poor under extreme dis-
tress had reduced their nourishment. Something
is to be said for the feeding effect of pure country
air, as might be proved in the fine condition of
most of the Italian and Spanish peasantry. No
doubt the agricultural population can exist better
under deprivation of food than town-bred people
working in close towns, but to this we observe
the Report does not pay much attention. At any
rate it is hard that the sous of the soil should
be compelled to live on air in those very counties
where the fattest oxen and the fattest farmers
abound. It ie remarkable, indeed, that the agricul-
tural labourer partakes much lees of his employer's
prosperity than the miner or the spinner ; the
farmer has in his hands a greater power of con-
trolling wages, with little or no means of enlarging