Mortality

“ Beginning with the earliest stages of life, and ending with the latest, I have pointed out some of the causes of the needless mortality and the prevalent imperfection of health, for which society is answerable. Slight and superficial as my treatment of the subject must be in a series of essays like these, I believe I have exhibited facts enough to show that we have all something to do in checking untimely death, both in our own persons and in those of our neighbours. ”

“ But death does not come at the bidding of the miserable. I had lately recovered from mortal illness, and my blood had never flowed with such an even current, nor had my limbs ever been so instinct with quick life, as now. I felt that my death must be voluntary. Yet what more natural than famine, as I watched in this chamber of mortality, placed in a world of the dead, beside the lost hope of my life? ”

“ The universal brotherhood of man appeared before him, and it smelt of mortality—no partial, exclusive mortality, but a mortality comprehensive, universal, condensed and averaged up from the grand totality of items. ”

“ And to him the idea of mortality comes in a shape less violent and harsh than is its wont, less as an abrupt catastrophe than as a thing of infinitesimal gradation, and the last step on a long decline of way. ”

“ A fearful truth for medical men has been established by the table of mortality by Dr. Casper, published in the British Review. Of 1000 members of the medical profession, 600 died before their sixty-second year; while of persons leading a quiet life—such as agriculturists or theologians—the mortality is only 347. ”

“ The habits of order the system acquires in this period, continue to produce good health for many years afterwards; and hence bills of mortality prove that fewer persons die between forty and fifty-seven, than in any other seventeen years of human life. ”

“ How many lives were lost in this, which some historians have called the great mortality, can be estimated only by the facts which have been stated, and which betoken an uncommonly violent degree of agitation in men’s minds. ”

“ For our present purpose it suffices to have pointed out that the conception of man's mortality—a conception which now seems of all others the most natural and "innate"—was in all probability a relatively late scientific induction of our primitive ancestors. ”

“ This great mortality had obvious causes for its existence." "Predispositions to sickness, the effects of obvious causes, the comfortless condition of men exposed to cold, wanting the common necessaries of life to support them in their exhausted states." ”

“ Wherever the pressure of the causes of death has yet been observed to be very great, there the line of mortality, or the average age of death, is below, what may be called, the line of vitality constituted by the average age of the living ”

“ But the thought that so many youths of goodly presence, warm with life, health, and confidence, were within so short a time cold in the grave, by various, yet all violent and unexpected modes of death, afforded a picture of mortality at which the mind trembled. ”

“ I should think the fact that the medical man is always face to face with mortality”—he pointed to a suspended skeleton in the corner—“and all the other big fundamental things like birth and pain, ought to give him a sort of sense of proportion and make him sensitive to the beauties of life. ”

“ a distemper which kills many more than is generally imagined, and would have a fair title to a place in the bill of mortality, did it not differ in one instance from all other diseases—viz., that no physician can cure it. ”

“ From a review of what has been effected within the last nine and thirty years, in lessening the mortality of many diseases, we are led to look forward with confidence and pleasure to the future achievements of our science. ”

“ There is no one affliction of mortality more easily and certainly reducible, with a little patience, and a rational confidence in the physician. With these simple conditions, I look upon the cure as absolutely certain. ”

“ The general conclusions which the facts that have come to my knowledge tend to establish on the subject of the experience of mortality are, that there is no general law of mortality yet established that is applicable to all countries or to all classes, or to all times, as commonly assumed; that every place, and class, and period has rather its own circumstances and its own law, varying with those circumstances ”

“ The people were dying out, and had got used to the dying-out process, and had formed habits of life adapted to this process: there was the great mortality among the children, the over-working of the women, the under-feeding, especially of the aged. ”

“ One had heard and read a great deal about death, and even seen a little of it, and knew by heart the thousand commonplaces of religion and poetry which seemed to deaden one's senses and veil the horror. Society being immortal, could put on immortality at will. Adams being mortal, felt only the mortality. Death took features altogether new to him, in these rich and sensuous surroundings. Nature enjoyed it, played with it, the horror added to her charm, she liked the torture, and smothered her victim with caresses. Never had one seen her so winning. ”

“ This may be defined as the pro portion of the persons of that age who would die in the course of a year, if the intensity of the mortality remained constant for a year, and the number of persons under obser vation also remained constant, the places of those who die being constantly replaced by fresh lives. ”

“ Mortality has its compensations: one is that all evils are transitory, another that better times may come. ”

“ How gladly would I meet Mortality my sentence, and be earth Insensible! How glad would lay me down As in my mother's lap! There I should rest, And sleep secure; ”

“ The science of being reveals man and immortality upon the basis of Spirit, and not matter; but what we term personal sense defines mortal man, hence his mortality. We have discerned disease in mortal mind, and recognized the patient's fear of it, many weeks before the so-called disease made its appearance on the body; and because disease is a belief, a latent thing of mind, before it appears as matter, we are never mistaken in our metaphysical diagnosis of disease. ”

“ Each period of life has to furnish its special toll. If we look at the mortality among men or women for a period of years, we shall see this phenomenon very clearly. In the following table we see the deaths of men from cancer, in England, at each ten-year age-period. ”

“ If a mortality table of the usual form is deduced from these suppositions, out of 212 persons alive at the age of 3, 2 will die every year up to 53, 3 in each of the ten years from 53 to 63, 4 in each of the next ten years from 63 to 73, and 6 in each of the next seven years from 73 to 80, when all will be dead. ”

“ For in many cases nothing can prevent mortality, as is evident by the death of the best physicians themselves, and by the death of many who consulted with them for a cure, since many die under the hands of the most able doctors, as well as quacks. ”

“ In the presence of ancient things, the link between all mortality seems most strongly felt. We perceive our association with the dead more strongly. The character and habits of thought of the person, of course, render it a more distinct or obscure perception ”

“ In order to form useful tables of the ratio of mortality at various ages, to determine upon the absolute and relative havock by different{37} diseases, upon the general effects of climate, season, local situation, diet, drink, luxuries, new customs, and manners, &c. we should extend our views far beyond the narrow bounds of a parish, or even of a province; we should include an interval of many years, collective numbers, and large groups of mankind. ”

“ In the whole country, the marvellous results which have been produced can be seen. Thanks to these laws, the rate of mortality has been lowered, the mean duration of life increased, the amount of sickness decreased. ”

“ He is struck down apparently by disease, and acquiesces in his infirmity as the mere condition of mortality. We must all part. The last half-choked words must be spoken sooner or later, so that in idle grief there is no use. ”

“ A general constitution, previously able to bear without derangement certain variations in atmospheric conditions, and certain degrees of other unfavorable actions, if lowered in tone, will become subject to new kinds of perturbation, and new causes of death. In illustration I need but refer to the many diseases from which civilized races suffer, but which were not known to the uncivilized. Nor is it only by such new causes of death that the rate of mortality, when decreased in one direction, increases in another. ”

“ Man has a body as well as a soul, and the whole of man, soul and body, is nourished sanely by a multiplicity of observed traditional things.... Not only death ... but that accompaniment of mortality which is a perpetual series of lesser deaths and is called change, is challenged, chained, and put in its place by unaltered and successive acts of seasonable regard for loss and dereliction and mutability ... the perils of sickness in the body and even in the mind, anxiety, honour harassed, all the bitterness of living—become part of a large business which may lead to Beatitude. ”

“ Infantile mortality is also a serious question, which is now engaging a large part of the public attention, but here again we can say that the present conditions are as dust in the balance compared with those of 150 years ago. ”

“ From the most accurate political accounts, made by comparing the bills of mortality published in different countries and climates, we shall insert the following result:—Of one thousand persons living in large cities, no less than thirty-five or thirty-six die annually ”

“ If we take care of the feeble and helpless, the diseases that appear in their race must be met by new remedies; and new causes of death have arisen from our philanthropic anxiety to suppress former causes of mortality in the feeble. ”

“ Except what has been done by a few authors, hereafter to be mentioned, the sciences of Medical Arithmetick and Universal Prognosticks, are new in medicine. In emergencies, the constant appeal has been, with oracular reverence, to aphorisms and opinions of individuals. In a word, no medical author has yet attempted to take the gages of life and death, and of morbid devastation, and, in one general survey, to encircle{38} the horizon of human existence and distempers. ”

“ A few more die in the short interval between five and ten years of age, than in the succeeding double interval from ten to twenty. Between eight and sixteen years of age, one of every seventy of the Christ School boys is computed to die. ”

“ By my troth, cousin, methinketh that the death which men commonly call "natural" is a violent death to every may whom it fetcheth hence by force against his will. And that is every man who, when he dieth, is loth to die and fain would yet live longer if he could.
Howbeit, cousin, fain would I know who hath told you how small is the pain in the natural death! As far as I can perceive, those folk that commonly depart of their natural death have ever one disease and sickness or another. ”

“ If the line of health is not in the centre of the hand, and if there is only the line of life, and the line of fortune united so as to form an angle, a natural death cannot be looked for. Do not, therefore, look for a natural death! ”

“ To this we replied, it is poor logic that facts contradict; we have many cases on record of cures wrought through mind alone, that materia medica had failed to reach. You admit death has occurred from fright, and this proves every function of the body controlled by mind; death covers the whole ground, it stops the action of brain, heart, blood, lungs, etc., and if all organic action can be stopped by mind, it is controlled by it, and can be cured also. ”

“ The inevitable conclusion to be drawn from facts such as these is that health and disease, and life and death, interact, are inextricably blended together, and mutually transformable—what we call disease and death in one place being necessary for life and health in another. ”

“ But sooner or later, either with warning or without it whether we think it or whether we do not think it, we shall have to die; and at every hour, at every moment, we approach nearer to our gallows even to that last illness, which will be the cause of our death.
At every age the houses, the streets, and the cities, are again inhabited by fresh people, and the old inhabitants are borne to the grave their last resting-place. ”

“ The disease, eating away his life, had diminished that revolt against death which is in the healthy flesh of every man. He was levying upon the vital forces remaining in him, which, distributed naturally, might cover a year or so, to give him here and now a few moments of unnatural strength for the completion of a hopeless struggle. ”

“ And if it be necessary to observe propriety of conduct towards the dead, how careful should you be in your behaviour to the living—your poor, sick, suffering fellow-creatures, at whose bedside you are permitted to watch the ravages of disease, and to contemplate the approach of death. ”

“ Grey hairs, or enfeebled frames, and the perceptible growth within us of the seeds of mortal disease, and sick beds, and sudden deaths around us, may cause us momentary misgivings, may make us perhaps permanently a little uneasy: but still we live on, as though there were no end of life; we put off preparation for death, and for another state after death, as though we could not die till we chose to do so. ”

“ Disease, nay even misfortune, would be death; for though neither might be mortal, yet either would disable him from living, and reduce him to a state in which he might rather be said to perish, than to die. ”