By Dr. B.W. RICHARDSON.
During the seven weeks of extreme atmospheric cold in which the last
year ended and with which the present year opened, every one has been
startled by the mortality that has prevailed among the enfeebled and
aged population. Friends have been swept away in a manner most painful
to recall, under the influence of an external agency, as natural as it
is fatal in its course, and over which science, as yet, holds the most
limited control.
In the presence of these facts questions occur to the mind which have
the most practical bearing. Why should a community wake up one day
with catarrh or with the back of the throat unduly red and the tonsils
large? Why, in a particular village or town, shall the medical men be
summoned on some particular day to a number of places to visit
children with croup? What is the reason that cases of sudden death, by
so-called "apoplexy," crowd together into a few hours? Why, in a given
day or week, are shoals of the aged swept away, while the young live
as before? These are questions which curative and preventive medicine
have not yet mastered as might be desired. Curative medicine, at the
name of them, too often stands abashed, if her interpreter be honest;
and preventive medicine says, if her interpreter be honest, "The
questions wait as yet for full interpretation."
Still, we are not altogether ignorant; some circumstances appear to be
followed by effects so definite, that we may almost consider we have
before us, in true position, cause and effect. Let us look at this
position in reference to _the simple influence of temperature on the
value of life_.
If we observe the fluctuation of the thermometer by the side of the
mortality of the nation at large, no calculable relationship seems, at
first sight, to be traceable between the one and the other. But if, in
connection with the mortality, care be taken to isolate cases, and to
divide them into groups according to the ages of those who die, a
singular and significant series of facts follow, which show that after
a given age a sudden decline of the temperature influences mortality
by what may be considered a definite law. The law is, that variations
of temperature exert no marked influence on the mortality of the
population under the age of thirty years; but after the age of thirty
is reached, a fall of temperature, sufficient to cause an increased
number of deaths, acts in a regular manner, as it may be said, in
waves or lines of intensity, according to the ages of the people. If
we make these lines nine years long, we discover that they double in
effect at each successive point. Thus, if the, fall in the temperature
be sufficient to increase the mortality at the rate of one person of
the age of thirty, the increase will run as follows: 1 death at 30
years of age will become 2 deaths at 39 years of age, 4 at 48 years, 8
at 57 years, 16 at 66 years, 33 at 75 years, and 64 at 84 years.
In these calculations nothing seems to be wanting that should render
them trustworthy; they resulted from inquiries conducted on the
largest scale; they were computed by one of our greatest authorities
in vital statistics, the late Dr. William Farr, and they accord with
what we gather from common daily observation. They supply, in a word,
the scientific details and refinements of a rough estimate founded on
universal experience, and they lead us to think very gravely on many
subjects which may not have occurred to us before, and which are as
curious as they are important.
We often hear persons who know little about vital phenomena, by which
term I mean nothing mysterious, but simply the physics embraced in
those phenomena which we connect with form and motion under the term
life, harping on the one string, that man knows nothing of the laws of
life and death. But what an answer to such presumption do the facts
rendered above supply. Life and death are here reduced, on given
conditions, to reasonings as clear and positive as are the reasonings
on the development of heat by the combustion of fuel. It is not
necessary for the vital philosopher to go out into the towns and
villages to take a new census of deaths to enable him to give us his
readings of the general mortality under the conditions specified. He
may sit in his cabinet, and, as he reads his thermometer day by day,
predict results. There is a fall of temperature that shall be known by
experience to be sufficiently deep and prolonged to cause an increase
of one death among those members of the community who have reached
thirty years. Then, rising by a definite rule, there have died
sixty-four, in proportion to that one, of those who have reached
eighty-four years. This is sound calculation, and it leads to
reflection. It leads one to ask, what, if the law be so definite, are
curative and preventive medicine doing meanwhile, that they shall not
disturb it? I fear that they hardly produce perturbations, and I do
not see why they should; because, as the truth opens itself to the
mind, the tremendous external change in the forces of the universe
that leads to the result, is not to be grappled with nor interfered
with by any specific method of human invention. The cause is too
general, too overwhelming, too grasping. It is like the lightning
stroke in its distance from our command; but it is widely spread, not
pointed and concentrate; prolonged, not instantaneous; and, by virtue
of these properties, is so much the more subtile and devastating.
At first it seems easy to explain the reason why a sudden fall in
temperature should lead to an increase in the number of deaths, and it
is to be admitted that, to a certain extent, the reason is clear.