More than half the sickness and more than half the deaths in New York (and probably the same holds true of our other cities) are due to causes which may be prevented,--in other words, which are the result of individual or municipal neglect, of carelessness or indifference in regard to the known and established laws of life. More than half the children who are born in New York (and the proportion is over forty per cent. in Boston) die before they are five years old. Much is implied in these statements,--among other things, much criminal recklessness and wanton waste of the sources of wealth and strength in a state.
In Paris, in London, and in other European cities, the average mortality has been gradually diminishing during the last fifty years. In New York, on the contrary, it has increased with frightful rapidity; and in Boston, though the increase has not been so alarming, it has been steady and rapid. [Footnote: The facts upon winch these statements are based are recorded in the Report of the Sanitary Commission of Massachusetts, 1850,--in the Annual Reports of the Boston City Registrar,--in the Annual Reports of the New York Society for Improving the Condition of the Poor,--and in other public documents.
It appears that the ratio of deaths to population was,
In New York, in 1810, 1 in 46.46 " 1840, 1 in 39.74 " 1850, 1 in 33.52 " 1857, 1 in 27.15
In Boston, in 1830, 1 in 48 " 1840, 1 in 45 " 1850, 1 in 38 " 1858, 1 in 41
It is probable that the ratio for the year 1858 showed somewhat more improvement even than appears from the above figures. The proportion is based on the population as ascertained in 1855. Up to 1858, the population was somewhat, though not greatly, increased, and any increase would serve to render the proportion in 1858 more favorable to the health of the city. But it was a year in which the number of deaths was less than it had been since 1850; it was, therefore, an exceptional year; and the change in the ratio of the deaths is, we fear, not the sign of the beginning of a progressive improvement.]
But more and worse than this is the fact, that in these two cities the average duration of life (and this means the material prosperity of the people) has of late terribly decreased. While out of every hundred people more die than was the case ten, twenty, thirty years ago, those who die have lived a shorter time. Life is not now to be reckoned by its "threescore years and ten." Its average duration in Boston is little above twenty years; in New York it is less than twenty years. [Footnote: In Boston, from 1810 to 1820, the average age of all that died was 27.85 years; in 1857, leaving deaths by casualty out of the calculation, it was but 20.63 years; in 1858, it was 21.76. In New York, from 1810 to 1820, it was 26.15; for the last ten years of which the statistics are known, it was less than 20.] Is the diminution of the length of life to go on from year to year?