The Express.
London, England, 1866-10-10 00:00:00

HIGH WATER AT LONDON lIRIDOL

Tins DiS'nllo;niug7-2illni:.7.7:AlteisoOn, ab. 7m.
TO-3101BOW—MornING Sb. 241 n Afternoon, 3h. SS=

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 10.

OP the !several departments in which the Ario-
dation for the Promotion of Social Science is

organized none has done better service than that
which occupies itself with the condition and laws
of public health. No other department has
attracted to its discussions so large a number of

practised scientific observers, who have enriched its
proceedings with the result of their inquiries, and
no other has exerted so direct and beneficial an
influence on legislation. It has been customary
to introduce the business of each session with a
general survey of the field of inquiry. In discharging
this duty at the congress now sitting, Dr. Fear,
the president of the year, compared the condition
of the leading nations of Europe in respect of
public health. Circumstances are just now
lending increased importance to this question ;
we are at the present time spectators of

political changes as important as any which
have taken place within the present century, and
are looking for nothing less than a reconstruction
of the map of Europe. Population is that ele-
ment of national force which, in all ages, states-
men and politicians have been most ready to re-
cognise. But the rate of mortality which prevails
in a country, and which is no other than the
measure and expression of the public health, is
one of the chief determining elements of the nu-
merical strength of the population ; while the
quality of that population, as strong and healthy,
and apt for all the works of peace and the achieve-
ments of war, depends directly upon the proportion
of deaths to the number of persons living. It
makes all the difference to the strength of a
country at a given period, whether nine hundred
of its adults are bringing up six hundred children,
or nine hundred children are under the care of
six hundred adults.
In the scale of the health of the several
European nations Russia occupies the lowest place.
If the enormous territory of that empire were as
densely populated as England, it would contain no
fewer than five hundred and twenty-three millions
of inhabitants. Its real condition gives Dr. FARR

occasion to remark that "it enables us to conceive ;
" the state of the population of Europe in the ,
" dark ages." The people of its various races,
from the Caucasus to the Arctic Ocean, &e at
all ages, from birth up to a hundred and forty
years, as is said ; but their mean lifetime is only
twenty-five years, and their death-rate thirty-six
per thousand. The mortality is greatest in the
south of the empire, ranging from forty to fifty-two
about the Caucasus, the Black Sea, and the Caspian,
while in the cold provinces on and near the
shores of the Baltic it is nearly as low as in
England. The countries comprehended in the
new kingdom of Italy suffer much from disease,
especially those recently incorporated, and which
were long under the rule of petty princes. The
death-rate of the whole kingdom is thirty. In
Parma it is thirty-five, Modena thito-one,
Romagna and the Marshes thirty-one, Tuscany
thirty-three, and Naples thirty-five. Umbria,
however, is healthier even than Piedmont, and
Rome, thanks to her aqueducts, is the healthiest
city of Italy. Dr. FARR remarks, as a peculiarity
of Italy, that the population of the country is as
unhealthy as that of the towns, and designates as
among the first duties of the Government
which has supplanted the small paralysing
despotisms, the restoration of the great
drainage works and the magnificent aque-
ducts for which the country was once famous.
Of Turkey, Syria, Egypt, and North Africa, con-
nected with each other and with Europe by the
Mediterranean, all that can be said is, that while
they are among the faiest regions of the world,
they are desolated by diseases, unhealthier than
Russia or Italy, and numerics of the plague that

subjects Europe to the vexatious oppressiun of
quarantine. A high rate of mortality prevails
all over Germany and the countries subject to
German government. In Austria it is 30 ;in
PEUIOO4 Bavaria, and the Upper Danube, and in
Saxony:33. In none of these countries do the
people live on an average 30 years. Dr. Finn
observes that 300,000 men, women, and children
are killed in Germany every year by diseases in
texcess of the numbers dying of the same diseases
in France.

England may be taken as the centre of a
healthier European region. In Norway the death-
rate is 17 pr. 1,000, and the mean lifetime of
the people full 50 years. In Holland, with its
river deltas and natural difficulties of drainage,
the rate of mortality is 26, and the mean lifetime
35. In Belgium, although the population is
denser than in any other part of Europe, the
death rate little exceeds 22. It is by this last
figure that the mortality of our own country and
France is represented. We die at the rate of 22
per 1,000 every year, the mean age of our
population is 26 years, and we live 35 years on
an average. The rapid increase of our population
excites the wonder of foreign statisticians, but
while the increase continues it does so
at a decreasing rate, owing to the vast
emigration which takes place from our shores.
" The population of the American colonies, of the
" United States, of Australasia, and of the United
" Kingdom, was twenty millions in 1801, thirty-
" eight millions in 1831, and sixty-five millions in
" 1861. Here is an increase of 18 and of 27,
H or, in the aggregate, of 45 millions in sixty
" years ; and after deducting sufficient numbers
" for the increase of alien rages, a residue of in-
" crease is left equal in its multitude to the pre- I
" sent population of France." These are remark-
able
facts, reminding us how much the character
.of our civilization is destined to affect that of the
human rate, apart from the political fortunes of
our own State. It will be wise, however, not to
allow them to divert attention from the great and
manifest defect' which remain to be supplied in
our own sanitary condition. A trunk which sends
out and nourishes such mighty branches must it-
self be protected from influences which would
destroy its health and vigour.