Note 24 — IV.—COMPARATIVE CHANCES OF LIFE IN DIFFERENT CLASSES OF THE COMMUNITY.

Bibliothèque Universelle, September, 1831.

In Alexandria, which is a seat of pestilence, where the Arab population leave the ordure before their doors (as we have seen large classes of the lower population do in this country), where the dog is the only scavenger of the animal refuse (as the pig is in many districts in our towns), where those who have died of plague remain unburied for days amidst the abodes of the living (as those who have died of fever often do in the poorest districts in this country),—there, under the more powerful action of a burning sun, disease and death are proportionately rife; and, as shown by some returns of death in 1841, out of a population of 60,000, the deaths were 7,017 (of which 1,165 only were from plague), or more than one-tenth of the population. It is known, however, that in the well-cleansed and best streets, inhabited by the European and fluctuating population, the proportion of mortality is not greater than amidst a similar population in the towns of Europe; but it is stated that the lower population, notwithstanding that it has been decimated by the annual mortality, has, within the last quarter of a century, more than doubled.