Page:Notes on Nursing What It Is, and What It Is Not.djvu/117

Rh to the probable duration of life of members of a family or inmates of a house, than the most scientific physician to whom the same persons are brought to have their pulse felt; no inquiry being made into their conditions.

In Life Insurance and such like societies, were they instead of having the person examined by a medical man, to have the houses, conditions, ways of life, of these persons examined, at how much truer results would they arrive! W. Smith appears a fine hale man, but it might be known that the next cholera epidemic he runs a bad chance. Mr. and Mrs. J. are a strong healthy couple, but it might be known that they live in such a house, in such part of London, so near the river that they will kill four-fifths of their children; which of the children will be the ones to survive might also be known.

Averages again seduce us away from minute observation. "Average mortalities" merely tell that so many percent, die in this town and so many in that, per annum. But whether A or B will be among these, the "average rate" of course does not tell. We know, say, that from 22 to 24 per 1,000 will die in London next year. But minute inquiries into conditions enable us to know that in such a district, nay, in such a street, — or even on one side of that street, in such a particular house, or even on one floor of that particular house, will be the excess of mortality, that is, the person will die who ought not to have died before old age.

Now, would it not very materially alter the opinion of whoever were endeavoring to form one, if he knew that from that floor, of that house, of that street the man came.

Much more precise might be our observations even than this, and much more correct our conclusions.

It is well known that the same names may be seen constantly recurring on workhouse books for generations. That is, the persons were born and brought up, and will be born and brought up, generation after generation, in the