View report page

6 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON.
paring it with Holborn or Whitechapel, or Bermondsey,
or other urban localities, where (whatever
the relative badness of the places) the scale of
comparison would be essentially vicious, and the
results of comparison worthless. It is my object
to test the salubrity of the City by comparison with
a superior standard, in order that some definite aim
may appear, towards which the endeavours of
sanitary improvement shall be directed.
Starting, then, from the Registrars' Returns, I
invite you to inquire with me, how it has come to
pass that, within the City of London, there have
died in the last year twice as many persons as it
seems necessary that there should die; and whence
has arisen the apparent anomaly, that here—in the
very focus of civilization, where the resources of
curative medicine are greatest, and all the appliances
of charitable relief most effectual, still, notwithstanding
these advantages, there has passed
away irrevocably during the year so undue a proportion
of human life.
Let it not be imagined that the word 'cholera'
is a sufficient answer to these questions, or that its
mention can supersede the necessity for sanitary
investigation. Let it, on the contrary, be observed
that the epidemic which has visited us, extends its
ravages only to localities previously and otherwise
hostile to life; so that while all regions of the globe
in succession are shadowed by its dark transit, the