Researches upon the necropolis of New Orleans, with brief allusions to its vital arithmetic / by Bennet Dowler.

  • Dowler, Bennet, 1797-1879.
Date:
1850
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Researches upon the necropolis of New Orleans, with brief allusions to its vital arithmetic / by Bennet Dowler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    rary residents of the whole State, is less than one in 12 ? Would a Parisian, write self-damnatory opinions against the climate of that city, upon such data ? Concede to the Report 1,017 deaths of native Amer- icans beyond its own account—admit, (what is probably true,) that all the centenarians mentioned, are natives; and, what is the result? The Report gives 1 aged 130; 1 aged 110; 1 aged 105; and twenty aged 100; or, 23 aged 100 and over; that is more than one centenarian to every 101; or, two thousand five hundred times more than Franc< taking the deaths of Louisianians, alone, 23 centenarians in 29 d< aths ; or 1 centenarian to 33 deaths among the natives of the city. Facts of this sort, surely, do not prove the mortality to be twice as great as it ought to be compared with other places. Even the Cholera passed by the natives of New Orleans, to a very great degree, taking the Report as authority. Thus, of 3,171 deaths which took place from that disease, in 1849, the natives of the city and of the State, contributed only 10G; or, 1 in 30 nearly, of the whole. Among 783 deaths from yellow fever, the State and city contributed 2 ; or, 1 in 391.5, and, among 640 deaths from all other fevers, but 17 ; or about 1 in 40. In fact, it is the mortality Of foreigners, that enables the Report to conclude that mortality of New Orleans, has been, for ten years, 1 in 20 aunually, instead of 1 in 40. Again, Dr. Fenner, in his Reports, shows that in 1849, the total number admitted into the Charity Hospital of New Orleans, was 15,- 558—of these, 13,634 were from foreign countries ; from countries un- known, 142, probably nearly all foreigners ; making 13,776 foreigners —from the different States of the Union, 1782, were admitted, leaving, as he shows, only 147 for all Louisiana. That is one Louisianian for every 103.79 patients born in other climates. And, yet, these foreign- ers furnish the data so much relied on, as the tests of the insalubrity of New Orleans ! If 1000,000 to 150,000 transient persons reside from one week, to 6 months, leave 1,000 or 10,000 dead behind them, this number distributed, not among the transient population to which they properly belong, but among the residents, will mislead the inquirer.— No city, how healthy so ever it may be, can have, under such a sys- tem, any other than a high ratio of mortality. Dr. Fenner shows, that of the whole number admitted into the Char- ity Hospital in 1849, 17 1-2 per cent., died, making 2,739 deaths.— This ratio will give Louisiana, about 27 deaths ; but, several reasons could be adduced, rendering it probable that Louisianians did not furnish an average mortality half as great, in tlie 100, as foreigners—say 12, in 147. Here, then, are 12 deaths to 2,727 : or, if figures be taken without explanation 147 sick Louisianians furnished, in 1849, no fewer than 2,739, deaths. Thus a Louisianian has 228.25 lives, while a cat was never suspected to have more than nine. Dr. Fenner gives the statistics of the Charity Hospital for 20 years, ending in 1850 : admissions 123,917 ; of these 1283 were Louisianians, a little over one in a hundred. Adopting the usual estimate, namely, that the other hospitals and the private cases in the city, exceed those of the Charity Hospital in the ratio of two to one, thrm, the last 20 years