Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 49.djvu/797

Rh 1838-'40 was, for males, 23·3; in 1887, only 19·8; for females, in 1838-'40, 22·5; in 1887, only 17·8.

From comparing death-rates for the ten years before and after 1872, the year of the passage of the Public Health Act, we find that "no less than 392,749 persons who, under the old régime, would have died, were, as a matter of fact, still living at the close of 1881. . . . Add to these saved lives the avoidance of at least four times as many attacks of non-fatal illness, and we have the total profits as yet received from our sanitary expenditure" (p. 127). "We may add that if the death-rates between 1881-1888 are included, the improvement becomes even more striking." Thus:

We are frequently met here by the statement that improved sanitary measures have nothing to do with vivisection. But, in order to gain the passage of costly sanitary measures, sound reasons must be given; these are drawn almost wholly from the pure sciences of physiology and hygiene, and in just those points which bear on public sanitation science owes much to experiment as an essential part. The truth of this we shall see more and more clearly as we proceed.

The most encouraging feature in the comparison of the new with the old tables of vital statistics is the decrease in child mortality. Newsholme, page 101, gives tables of annual death-rates by age-groups from 1838 to 1887. From this we see that whereas in 1838-'40, in every thousand infants born, 72·6 died under five years of age, in 1887 only 57·8 were lost—a gain of over twenty per cent. Abbreviating the table, we have, per thousand births: