The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-16 00:00:00

Course of Enhange,--Yesterday,
Amsterdam
12 0}
Ditto
Rotterdam — 12 2 12 21
Antwerp
Brussels — 25 721 25 77
liamburgh .. —l3 10 13 10i
Paris
Ditto
Marseilles — 25 70 25 75
Frankfort on Maine — 120! 1211
Vienna
Trieste
Petereburgh — 31 311

Berlin -
Madrid
Cadiz
Leghorn
Milan ....
Genoa
Naples
Palermo..
Messina ..
Lisbon
Oporto

- 47.1
-48 i
- 25 775
- 25 80
- 25 775
- 25 775
- 25 80
- 25 80
-51 t

48}
486
2b 85
25 85
25 82k
25 82i
25 85
26 85
52
62i

THE DEATH RATE AND THE MAIN DRAINAGE.—e•
At the present time, and during the next four or
five years, the statistics of mortality in the metropolis will
have a peculiar interest and value. At a first glance at the
returns of the Registrar-General, or those of Dr Letheby
for the City, it would seem that the interest which ordinarily
attaches to such documents could scarcely be enhanced by
anything less than either a plague on one hand, or a com-
plete cessation of the occurrence of death on the other. But it
happens that we are now in a transition state as respects the
public health. The vast undertakings of the Board of
Works are fast approaching completion; the sewage
is being diverted from old to new channels; the breadths
of mud laid bare at every ebb tide on the banks of the
Thames will probably be less offensive and less injurious;
and we are all looking forward hopefully to the time when
the river, which has made the City, shall no longer be
poisoned by it in return for its good deeds. There is just
one unfortunate circumstance connected with the main
drainage works, and that is, that the means adopted for the
purification of the river consists only in removing the pol-
luting agents to a greater distance than formerly from the
abodes of the citizens; the river is not relieved entirely,
but the pollution is to take place where there is P. vast
volume of water, and comparatively few residenie'
The poison will thus be diluted, and the point of its first
mixture with the water removed to a distance ; but it can
never be held that this method is so likely to be effectual as
the transference of the sewage to some quite different chan-
nels, as, for instance, the burnt-up meadows and barren
arable lands, where nature's chemistry would convert the
present sources of pestilence into sources of health
and happiness, and make wholesome food on land
of that which is the detroyer of food in the
waters. For a time—say for the first seven years—the
main drainage will be on trial, and we shall expect to see
in the returns of registrars some evidence of the good ac-
compliehed, though, in principle, the drainage system is
open to so many objections. We do not know how many
agencies exist fur the engendering and diffusing of morbid
influences in a place like London, which is neither a town
nor a city, but an aggregation of towns enclosing a city, and
the whole comprising so immense a population, that no
rule ef health found safe elsewhere can be said to apply
of necessity to such a case as this. We have need to
be thankful, however, fcr what little wo do know of the
laws of life and of tho effect on life of the circumstances
that surround it in the midst of great cities. From that
little, we may safely conclude that much has been:accom-
plished already to lengthen the term °Wife and reduce the
number of its penalties in London and in all our great
towns, but we are also compelled to conclude that much
remains to be done yet, and that every delay in the accom-
plishment must be paid for in so notch actual disease and
so many actual deaths; for though death is inevitable, and
must come upon all men, nevertheless the death-rate is an
exact measure of the value of our hygienic resources, as
well as of the extent to which clotructive agencies aro
pormittot) to prevail)—City .rress.