FRESH AIR AND DEATH.

Patea Mail, Volume II, Issue 201, 14 March 1877, Page 2

FRESH AIR AND DEATH.

The statistics disease in England for the year 1874, contained in the recently published report of the RegistrarGeneral, are exceedingly instructive. They show that the diseases most to be dreaded are not in fact those which we regard with the most terror. The fever j)oisons cause but a small proportion of the deaths compared with the. mortality due to the action of bad -air, aml bad food, and cold and damp. Of the five hundred thousand persons who- died in England in 1874, fifty-three thousand were killed by bronchitis, ami fifty thousand by pulmonary consumption-. Atrophy and debility destroyed thirty one thousand lives, old age twonty-uiue I thousand, heart disease about as many, convulsions twenty-seven thousand, and pneumonia one thousand less. The first fever occupies the eighth place on the list, where we find that twenty-live thousand persons died of scarlet fever in the year under review. It will be seen that by ordinary care-taking much may be done to prevent those diseases which prove most fatal to mankind. We may well rejoice with the London Times to discover that “ the chief foes of human life, instead of being subtle and mysterioms poisons which defy the curiosity of science, are open enemies against whom all but the poorest may take easy measures of precaution.