The Express.
London, England, 1848-11-04 00:00:00

Even in Class Vlll.—Pusrpzral Diseases—we find
a large increase. The pangs and perk of maternity
are found to be aggravated by the same causes which
have increased the fatality of other forms of suffering.
The deaths in Childbirth and from analogous diseases
were :
In 1640. In IBC.
.paereatte.

Demur to (filWNrfa, ace.
We have thus gone through almost the whole cycle
of the principal classes of disease, chronic and organic,
as well as epidemic and contagious, and in every class
we find an increase greatly exceeding the utmost pos-
sible development that can be assigned to our popula-
tion. Our statistical summary would be incomplete,
if we did not state the total deaths from all causes
which occurred in the metropolitan districts in the
years 1840-7 respectively. The numbers are, 47,172
—46,196 - 46,232-49,491-50,586 —48,475 —49,277
—60,442. Here the principal increase is confined to
the lest year; and we have no objection that this fact
should stand for what it is worth against the infer-
ences as to the gradual increase of mortality
which we have drawn above. It will not
the less remain a fact, that deaths from
the most malignant epidemic and chronic diseases
have increased in the proportions we have tabulated
above. It is not merely the actual mortality, but the
general state of health of the metropolis, that may be
gauged by the returns which we have analysed.
How vast an amount of sickness and suffering is re-
presented by an increase of a few thousand deaths, or
even a few hundreds in certain classes of disease, our
readers will scarcely require to be reminded. Deaths
are the exceptions in almost all diseases: and every
fatal case implies the existence of a number of caw s
which, though not fatal, add nevertheless incalculably
to the burdens and inflictions of all classes, especially
of those who are dependent on their labour for their
daily bread.

We have hardly left ourselves space for any
inquiry into the special causes of this extra-
ordinary excess in the mortality of the me-
tropolis; an excess, be it remembered, which
has been steadily maintained during the pre-
sent year, at a time when the health of all other parts
of the country has been sensibly ameliorated. All the
old sanitary abuses doubtless contribute their share to
the melancholy result. Sewers, cesspools, catt:e-
markets, slaughter-houses, knackers' yards, grave-
yards, stagnant waters, and all the other generaws
of disease, etetribute their full contingent to the pesti-
lential carnage. It must be kept in mind,
too, that this enormous city is becoming
with each revolving year more end more of a
city. Large districts, which ten years ago were
green fields, are now covered with houses. In the
same period of time an addition, equal to the entire
population of Liverpool or Manchester, has been made
to the number of our inhabitants. In the same period
of time half a million of corpses have been committed
to the ground, nine-tenths of which have been buried'
in our city grave-yards, a circumstance in itself suffi-
cient to account for any pestilence. The filth accu-
mulated in our sewers has been augmented by the ten
years' contributions of more than 2,000,000 of people,
and all the animals whose labour they require
when living, or whose caresses they con-
sume when dead. The commerce and manufactures
of the city have increased in proportion; petty traffic
and locomotion have likewise in many ways developed
themselves; and scores of steamers are perpetually
stirring up the polluted waters which were formerly
left in undisturbed repose. All the multifarious hot-
beds of miasma and infection have received perpetual
nouriihm-.nt, while the green fields have been reced-
ing further and further from the city's centre. What
wonder that in such a state of things the epidemics of
typhus, and influenza, and small-pox, and scarlatina,
and diarrhcca, should each in turn exhibit an un-
exampled malignity ! It would be a much greater
wonder, if the congregation of two millions and a
quarter of inhabitants in one city did not produce
results unexampled in the experience of less gigantic
oommunities.