There can be no doubt, I think,
that the palsy of children becomes more frequent in cities just in
proportion to their growth in population. I mention it here because, as
it is a disease which does not kill but only cripples, it has no place
in the mortuary tables. Neuralgia is another malady which has no record
there, but is, I suspect, increasing at a rapid rate wherever our people
are crowded together in towns. Perhaps no other form of sickness is so
sure an indication of the development of the nervous temperament, or
that condition in which there are both feebleness and irritability of
the nervous system. But the most unquestionable proof of the increase of
nervous disease is to be looked for in the death statistics of cities.
There, if anywhere, we shall find evidence of the fact, because there we
find in exaggerated shapes all the evils I have been defining. The best
mode of testing the matter is to take the statistics of some large city
which has grown from a country town to a vast business hive within a
very few years. Chicago fulfils these conditions precisely. In 1852 it
numbered 49,407 souls. At the close of 1868 it had reached to 252,054.
Within these years it has become the keenest and most wide-awake
business centre in America. I owe to the kindness of Dr. J.H. Rauch,
Sanitary Superintendent of Chicago, manuscript records, hitherto
unpublished, of its deaths from nervous disease, as well as the
statement of each year's total mortality; so that I have it in my power
to show the increase of deaths from nerve disorders relatively to the
annual loss of life from all causes.
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