merly beyond human art.* The plague,† smallpox, and fever no longer spread the same terror and destruction. The plague appears to be at present confined to the filthy cities of the Mahometans. "The yellow fever has ceased to appear in New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, since 1803, and the inhabitants are under no apprehension for the future."

Famines in all civilized countries have become more rare, less general, and less destructive.

In the fourteenth century, the black plague for the space of thirty years spread its ravages through all the countries of the world then known. In Russia, Poland, Germany, Sweden, the Low Countries, Great Britain, France, Swit

* Dr. Granville-" Treat., Mid."

+ Sir William Petty-" Political Arithmetick," p. 31.-" It is to be remembered that, one year with another, a plague happeneth in London once in twenty years or thereabouts: for in the last hundred years, between the years 1582 and 1682, there have been five great plagues-viz., anno 1592, 1603, 1625, 1636, and 1665. And it is also to be remembered that the plagues of London do commonly kill one-fifth part of the inhabitants."

Seybert "Statistical Annals of the United States of America," p. 48.

zerland, Italy, we are told that it destroyed from a fifth to a third of their inhabitants; and in many countries, as much as one-half of the population. The inhabitants, indeed, of some districts were reduced to less than a fourth of their former number. Some large towns, such as, for instance, Smolensko, one of the most populous of that period, were left almost without inhabitants. The dreadful epidemic of 1709 and 1710, principally occasioned by famine, was much less destructive. Since these two fearful scourges we have seen nothing similar in our climates. By a system of cultivation more varied in its products, and less liable to failure, the price of food is subject to less variation.

It is certainly owing to the progress of civilization that we no longer witness the excessive mortalities of former times, for we everywhere find that epidemics diminish in frequency and in intensity in proportion as the people they attack are removed from barbarism.

If we take the history of one epidemic, the small-pox, for example, it will be sufficient to shew the happy influence of civilization.

According to the account of Mons. Lesseps, a French traveller in Kamtschatka, in 1767 and 1768, three-fourths of the natives were destroyed by the small-pox. We are informed that the same disease made such ravages among the Indians of America towards 1520, that they have made it a fixed epoch from which they date to distinguish the years, as from the most fatal and extraordinary event that has ever arrived. Among what civilized nations has the small-pox ever occasioned so much evil? Among the most civilized nations of Europe it is calculated that about a seventieth part of those who take the infection die.

At Viareggio, in Tuscany, the inhabitants, few in number, and in a wretched state of misery and barbarism, were, from time immemorial, each year, at the same season, attacked by an intermittent fever. But in 1741 the neighbouring marshes were effectually drained, since which time the fever has ceased to reappear, and Viareggio is at the present time one of the healthiest and richest places on the coast of Tuscany. Thus the trifling expenditure of capital, aided

by science, that effected the draining of the marsh, has added many years of health and enjoyment to the inhabitants of Viareggio.

Dr. Villermé asserts, as the result of his observations, that epidemics are more general and more destructive in the country than in towns, and he attributes this fact to civilization being further advanced in towns than in the country. According to Dr. Short, who wrote in 1750, epidemics in England were more than twice as destructive in the country as in London and other large towns.

M. Chabrol, in his introduction to the "Recherches Statistiques," &c. of 1823,† observes," that in proportion as useful knowledge has been disseminated, and has influenced the acts of the public administration, great mortalities in Paris have become more rare. It has established a more uniform order in the series of annual deaths; the changes are not so sudden as they

* The above account of epidemics is taken from Dr. Villermé--Des Epidemies, " Annales d'Hygiène," vol. ix. part 2. "New Observations on City, Town, and Country Bills of Mortality," p. 101.

formerly were. Towards the beginning of the eighteenth century the annual number of deaths changed in the short interval of eight years from 13,000 to 29,000. Rigorous winters, scarcities, epidemics, the want of proper care and the application of proper remedies, the insalubrity of hospitals and habitations, produced at that time rapid and lamentable effects. More enlightened and humane views have since directed the administration of public relief. The dispositions of men's minds, and the progress of industry, have effected most happy changes. The number of annual deaths, always variable, as they are affected by a great variety of causes, has approached nearer to its mean value, which mean value has been progressively augmenting.

Most, if not all, contagious diseases, those great scourges of the human race, appear originally to have broken out among barbarous nations. The plague came from degenerated Egypt; or, perhaps, from the savage hordes in the interior of Africa. The small-pox and the meazles came from Arabia. The syphilis and the yellow fever from the American tribes; but as they come in