must not forget to mention that of Madame Mario, (late Jessie Meriton White,) whose unobtrusive and devoted services in the hospitals of Sicily and Naples have soothed many a sick and death-bed, and, under God's blessing, have saved many a valuable life. It will be remembered that the sick and wounded of the Sicilian hospitals presented this noble-hearted woman with a gold medal in grateful acknowledgment of her skill and care, when the course of affairs changed her scene of action to Naples. The same token of gratitude and esteem has been tendered to her at Naples,-five or six hundred of the sick and wounded Garibaldians there presenting her with a bouquet, a letter, attached to some of the signatures of which was the word "amputato," the poor fellows having signed with their left hand, and a gold medal, bearing on one side an inscription "â Jessie White Mario, i feriti Garibaldini,” on the other "Napoli, November, 1860,” with a horse in the centre as the emblem of Naples.

Those who know personally this truly noble woman will readily recognise a familiar trait in the following incident mentioned by the correspondent of the Daily News:-"It must not be omitted, that in making up her accounts -which have been kept with the most rigid correctness-Madame Mario found a deficiency of between thirty or forty piastres, missing through the carelessness of her secretary when she was attending the wounded at Caserta ; this she has replaced at her own loss, and I believe she has done the same in several other instances. I think it right to mention what she herself would have concealed, for she ought not to be the sufferer."

The visit of the Prince of Wales to the United States will render 1860 a memorable year in the annals of the two countries; may all the good that is looked for as the result attend it. The Prince has won for himself golden opinions, and in this, his first essay in public, has strengthened the nation's love for his royal mother, by the evidence he has given of the wise and careful training he has received.

The massacre in Syria and the Chinese war are the leading foreign events in which England, as a nation, has direct interest. The latter, for the time being, at all events, is brought to a satisfactory close, telegraphic intelligence having reached of a treaty concluded with the Chinese, and the retreat of our troops from Pekin to Tien-tsin.

The volunteer movement and the consequent early closing movement are effecting, in a quiet way, a revolution among ourselves, to one side of which, its ultimate influence upon the young men of our country, attention has not as yet been directed. The advantages are evident, the disadvantages at present less so; but to them we shall probably be more awake at the close than at the commencement of the year 1861.

66

A glance at our Passing Events of the year, shows it to have been singularly fatal among eminent and distinguished people. The deaths of Lady Byron and Mrs. Jameson have made themselves peculiarly felt with all who, like our readers and ourselves, know that the great cause of woman's social advancement has lost in them judicious friends and noble examples.

DR. W. T. GAIRDNER, F.R.C.P.E., read a paper "On Infantile Death-Rates, in their bearing on Sanitary and Social Science." After some preliminary remarks on the great value justly attached to the death-rates of young children, as indicating the favorable or unfavorable sanitary position of a community, he said that the importance of these infantile death-rates depended on two considerations-first, that infants were much more easily affected than the general community by most of those causes of disease and death which were common to all; and secondly, that their dependence upon their parents for bodily organization, as well as for proper nourishment and support subsequent to birth, made the sanitary state of very young children a most delicate test of the real health and well-being of the parents, i.e. of their social and moral condition at the productive period of life, and in so far as concerns the domestic relations. He was not so sanguine as to hope to be able to deduce from the infantile death-rates conclusions of a perfectly stable and unquestionable character; but there could be no harm in assuming that the comparison of infantile death-rates with one another, and with the general death-rates of the population in different districts, was calculated to throw light upon social science, and to lead to some conclusions which, when fairly discussed, might be worthy of a place in the records of the Association. After stating that he had chosen to confine himself to the period under one year in preference to the more usual one of under five years, as representing the death-rate of the earliest period of life, and also, in the most distinct form, the hazards to which infant lives were exposed, he proceeded to ask, whether we could arrive at any secure conclusions as to the relation which the infantile bears to the general death-rate? In order to solve this problem, he had availed himself very fully of the laborious calculations appended by the Registrar-General of England to his Ninth Annual Report, in which were given a death-rate for each sex, and for every separate Special reports of papers read in the Public Health Section of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, at Glasgow.

*

VOL. VI.

C C

age of human life in every division and county, and in 324 districts in England, calculated for the years 1838-44.

On considering broadly the death-rate of very young infants, as compared with that of the general population, it was found to be immensely different, insomuch that it was rather a moderate statement of the case to say, that where 20 represents the general death-rate, 150 will be the death-rate of infants less than a year old; or, in other words, that the infantile is 7 times the general death-rate. This was undoubtedly the case so frequently that it might be said to be, in one sense of the word, a normal fact. But it was not always a normal fact for the infantile death-rate to be 7 times the general death-rate. By a farther consideration of the returns of the Registrar-General, it appears that as the death-rates themselves rise or fall, their proportion to one another commonly rises or falls also. Thus, when the general death-rate is so low as 16 in 1,000, it is probably normal for the infantile death-rate not to exceed 6 times the general death-rate; and when the general death-rate is so high as 22 in 1,000, it is probably so common as to be normal for the infantile death-rate to be 8 times the general death-rate. This tells a tale of some importance as regards the tenure of infant life for the enlargement of the ratio between the infantile and general death-rate, according as the rates themselves increase, shows nothing less than this-that, generally speaking, the causes which produce a high rate of general mortality have a still greater tendency to produce a high rate of infant mortality, and operate upon the infant life to a far greater degree. In other words, the infant life is not only more largely sacrificed than the general life of a population under ordinary circumstances, but it is far more keenly sensitive to those causes of increased mortality which produce exceptionally high death-rates.

Noticing the complication which this introduced into the inquiry, Dr. Gairdner gave a few illustrations of the laws of infant mortality. First, as regarded the districts and counties having very low death-rates both infantile and general, and consequently a low ratio of the one to the other. These privileged districts were found to be mostly rural, often to a great extent pastoral in character; the population commonly sparse, the towns few and small, the face of the country uneven or perhaps mountainous; in many such districts there were valuable minerals and a considerable amount of mining industry; agriculture pursued in some of them to a very considerable extent; in others hardly any predominating industry, but a small population supported in a variety of ways upon a soil which did not repay large advances of capital. Of the districts falling within this description, the majority were in Wales, Cornwall and Devonshire. Notwithstanding the apparently unfavorable influence which some kinds of mining exerted on the health of the men actually engaged in them, it seemed certain from the experience of such places as

1

Liskeard, (Cornwall,) Anglesea, &c., that even lead and copper mining were capable of being so followed as not materially to increase the gross mortality of the district in which they prevailed; while the death-rate of infants was certainly much less unfavorably affected by mining than by many other forms of industry.

Again, amongst the districts having moderately but not extremely low death-rates, agriculture assumed a more considerable place as a staple industry than those above referred to; the farms larger, the proportion of laborers employed greater; gardening often appeared on a great scale, as in the neighborhood of London; the population more dense, and the towns more numerous, but still not generally above the rank of market-towns of 4,000 to 10,000 inhabitants. A large proportion of the districts in the south-eastern and south-western counties of England were in this position. Most of the great corn-growing districts of England belonged to the class having a lower than average death-rate for all ages. It was certain, from the case of Glendale, and many other districts of England, that agriculture, upon a considerable scale, was quite consistent with the best sanitary condition. Most of the great corn-growing counties of England had not only an infantile death-rate much higher than it ought to be, considering the amount of the general deathrate; but higher, also, than it ought to be considering the eminently rural character of the population, the small size of the towns, and the small number of persons to each acre of surface. It had been found that in no less than eleven of the fourteen counties of England most devoted to agriculture the ratio of the infantile to the general death-rate was higher than that indicated as the mean rate for their general death-rate; and further, that the ratio was enormously high. He had come to the conclusion that in almost all of the eminently agricultural counties the destruction of infant life was in excess of what might be expected under the circumstances. He stated, as the general result of his inquiries, that the evil was least in Wiltshire, Berks, and Herefordshire; that in Essex, Suffolk, Bucks, and Oxfordshire, it was quivocally present, and to a still greater degree in Hertfordshire. In Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Lincolnshire, and Norfolk, the infantile death-rate reached its maximum. The proportion between the infantile and general death-rate was more than 1 to 9-being in Norfolk 1 to 9.38, and in Lincoln 1 to 9.36.

une

He then remarked on the difficulties in the way of arriving at a just conclusion in regard to the death-rates in agricultural counties. On the one hand, there was distinct evidence that a large surface of soil devoted almost exclusively to agriculture was associated in some way or other in England and Wales with a too high rate of infantile mortality. On the other hand, it

was not less evident that agriculture, per se, was not the determining cause of the mischief-the district of Glendale alone being enough to prove that it was possible for a large proportion of the population to be engaged in agriculture without any increased effect upon the death-rate. What, then, was the solution of this two-sided difficulty? First, agriculture, an occupation apparently eminently favorable to low death-rates in the case of Glendale and other districts; secondly, agriculture, when largely diffused as an industry over the Midland counties, apparently unfavorable to infantile life. Dr. Headlam Greenhow had strongly insisted on the danger frequently accruing to the health of the female population or of the children in rural districts from the occupation of lace-making, straw-plait weaving, straw-bonnet making, &c.; but whatever might be the practical influence of such manufactures, it was not the sole or even the principal cause of infantile mortality, for it was only in seven of the agricultural counties that these manufactures acquired any decided preponderance. He could arrive at no other conclusion than this-that the habits of the great agricultural populations of England, probably slow of formation, and transmitted down from generation to generation in some way or other, were apt to give rise to neglect of the family relation or of maternal duty, and that the employment of women in some counties in special industries was one consequence of this habitual neglect, while the imperfect rearing of children was another and a still more widely-spread result.

With regard to the infantile death-rates of London, the West End districts had a general death-rate much below the average of town districts, and that even taking into account the "slums" of Westminster and the inferior population of St. Martin's-in-theFields, the mean death-rate of all the districts, which were the great seats of business and fashionable life, were decidedly below London as a whole, and still more below the average of other great cities. Of course there are many large populations in London where the general death-rates are very high, coming up to 29 in 1000; but he directed special attention to the fact that the infant mortality in London bore no appreciable proportion to the general death-rate. A careful consideration of the RegistrarGeneral's returns had led him to the conclusion that all the West End districts of London are fatal to children in a proportion which was really enormous, when the favorable state of the general death-rate was considered. For example, St. George's, Hanover Square, with very nearly the lowest general death-rate in London, was, with all its wealth and splendor, only a little less fatal to infants than Shoreditch, Bermondsey, and Lambeth. was more fatal than the Strand district or Stepney, far more fatal than Greenwich, and in a still more striking proportion, more fatal than Wandsworth, Camberwell, and the outlying districts in general.

It