Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/103

 Rh of New York, many radical defects exist, and ventilation, light, and drainage, are defective in the extreme. Diseases of the nervous system, principally of the trophic character, exist to a great extent, as results of imperfect lighting and ventilating.

In the five years preceding 1872 the deaths from nervous diseases in New York averaged 3,155.8, and for the years 1871 and 1872 were over 6,000, an unusually large proportion, the number of deaths from all causes being 59,623. The vices attending the colonization of the working-class (a great many do not work) are contagious, the moral contact of the vicious with the pure is certain to occur, the ruin of young girls, and depression of tone, are powerful inducers of suicide.

The American people partake of the characteristics of their transatlantic brethren. They are impulsive, energetic, enterprising, emotional, liable to excessive mental depression or exaltation. We have all the different bloods of Europe in our veins. We lead, however, an individual life of our own, a life as original and striking as other startling peculiarities of our country. We live too fast; we make and lose fortunes in a day; we acquire professional educations in a few years which take ordinary individuals as many more to get the rudiments of in Europe. It is any thing but festina lente here. The seeds of every national soil are sown, and take root before we can employ measures to suppress them. Every thing that can excite the emotions, make tense the mental faculties, and suddenly relax them, is among us. Speculations and stupendous schemes, which in older countries take several heads instead of one to mature, crush down the nervous system of men who work themselves to death, hardly taking time to eat, meanwhile living upon stimulants to enable them to stand the strain.

There is another class—I allude to the poor. The newspaper accounts of the miserable suicide in his upper attic tell this story every day. These subjects are chiefly foreigners, deluded to this country by unfounded expectations of fortunes to be made.

Only a few days ago I read in one of the daily papers that it was not an uncommon occurrence for immigrants to ask of the officials at Castle Garden, in perfect good faith, positions as insurance officers, bank officers, and other unattainable positions.

Many thousand Italians were sent here by rascally agents in their own country several years ago. They were promised work by these individuals, but on their arrival found none. They reached New York in mid-winter, and many of them found their way into the workshops and almshouses. Misery and suffering were prevalent. Among immigrants, particularly the Germans, there is a great disposition to suicide, and physical suffering doubtless awakens any hereditary tendency that may lie dormant. A great percentage remain at the seaport, looking for work. New York is particularly affected in this way. Immigrants come here, probably in most instances from occupations