The rate of mortality is more easily ascertained, and is generally
calculated and determined in civilized nations. This rate, among all
classes of males, between 20 and 40 years old, in England and Wales, is
.92 per cent.: that is, 92 will die out of 10,000 men of these ages, on
an average, in each year; but in the healthiest districts the rate is
only 77 in 10,000. The mortality among the males of Massachusetts, of
the same ages, according to Mr. Elliott's calculations, is 1.11 per
cent, or 111 in 10,000. This maybe safely assumed as the rate of
mortality in all New England. That of the Southern States is somewhat
greater.
These rates of sickness and death--one and a half or one and ninety-two
hundredths per cent, constantly sick, and seventy-seven to one hundred
and eleven dying, in each year, among ten thousand living--may be
considered as the proportion of males, of the army-ages, that should be
constantly taken away from active labor and business by illness, and
that should be annually lost by death. Whether at home, amidst the
usually favorable circumstances and the average comforts, or in the
army, under privation and exposure, men of these ages may be presumed to
be necessarily subject to this amount, at least, of loss of vital force
and life. And these rates may be adopted as the standard of comparison
of the sanitary influences of civil and military life.
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