Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/188

 which prevail in the locality. Were it desirable to invent a new name, perhaps Medical Demography would be more appropriate, at least, when applied to a thickly-peopled district. If the subject of the treatise be a locality with a small population, and which might require to be considered with reference to a future population or colony, Medical Topography would be the most apposite title, since it comprehends the principal objects of investigation; for soil, climate, geographical peculiarities, natural produce, &c. are almost the only hygienic or morbific agents which exist in such a situation; while, in the other instance, there are the more numerous and no less influential agents comprised in the various artificial circumstances of a fixed and crowded population.

According to this view. it would be more strictly in order, to speak, first, of the conditions of health and disease among the inhabitants of Bristol, and then to investigate their connections with external circumstances; but, for various reasons, it will be more convenient to take the latter first into consideration, just as in monographs upon special maladies, the causes are often enumerated and described before the detail of the symptoms. The first division, then, of our subject, will include those agencies which belong─1st, to the natural history of the locality; 2ndly, to the construction of the dwellings with reference to shelter, ventilation, drainage, &c.; and 3rdly, to the occupations, the physical and moral habits, the kinds of subsistence, clothing, &c. of the inhabitants. In the second part, we propose to make some remarks upon disease as it occurs in Bristol, and upon the average ratio of mortality.