I possess similar details as to
Philadelphia, which seem to admit of the same conclusions as those drawn
from the figures I have used. But here the evil has increased more
slowly. Let us see what story these figures will tell us for the Western
city. Unluckily, they are rather dry tale-tellers.
The honest use of the mortuary statistics of a large town is no easy
matter, and I must therefore ask that I may be supposed to have taken
every possible precaution in order not to exaggerate the reality of a
great evil. Certain diseases, such as apoplexy, palsy, epilepsy, St.
Vitus's dance, and lockjaw or tetanus, we all agree to consider as
nervous maladies; convulsions, and the vast number of cases known in
the death-lists as dropsy of the brain, effusion on the brain, etc., are
to be looked upon with more doubt. The former, as every doctor knows,
are, in a vast proportion of instances, due to direct disease of the
nerve-centres; or, if not to this, then to such a condition of
irritability of these parts as makes them too ready to originate spasms
in response to causes which disturb the extremities of the nerves, such
as teething and the like. This tendency seems to be fostered by the air
and habits of great towns, and by all the agencies which in these places
depress the health of a community. The other class of diseases, as
dropsy of the brain or effusion, probably includes a number of maladies,
due some of them to scrofula, and to the predisposing causes of that
disease; others, to the kind of influences which seem to favor
convulsive disorders.
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