XXII. Death from Diseases incidental to "The besprinkled nursling, unrequired Of infancy first blooms upon his cheek; The thinking, thoughtless schoolboy; the bold youth Smitten while all the promises of life Are opening round her." WORDSWORTH. A CLASS of diseases, often more or less infectious, befall so large a part of mankind, that they may be viewed as the common lot of a certain age and of certain localities. They are not seldom fatal to life, although, in their nature and under favourable circumstances, they do not necessarily inflict on the system any considerable shock. The mere growth of the teeth causes, in many infants, a suffering which, especially when united with other inconveniences, is capable of becoming destructive to the frail receptacle of an immortal spirit. A general disease and commonly a slight one, the whooping-cough, yet sometimes exhausts the vital powers of little children. Still more dreaded, for its occasional severity, is the measles, an eruptive malady of every degree of violence, infectious and not unfrequently mortal. Less common and far more terrible, the scarlet fever assails the youth ful family; and, when it takes its severer forms, sometimes sends several members at once to the grave. It deprived both France and England of heirs to the crown; France, of the Duke of Burgundy, grandson of Louis the Fourteenth and pupil of Fenelon; England, of the Duke of Gloucester, the son of Queen Anne. In certain regions, diseases are caused by the climate and atmosphere, such as are more fatal to strangers, but sometimes, though seldom, wear out the strength of the native inhabitant. Such are the agues and intermittent fevers of new countries, where the marshes fill the atmosphere with unwholesome vapours; and such, the indigenous complaints of tropical climates. No human care can avoid these maladies. They are not, in the usual sense, accidental, but rather the necessary appendages of our earthly condition. They are severally allotted to different lands, but no land is exempt from them all. Some of them are but once the lot of an individual; others may break down the frame by successive encroachments. They argue no special infirmity of the constitution. They spring from no extraordinary circumstance. It is appointed that men should pass by the way of some such perils, and that many should fall by this necessity. At certain seasons of the year, one-fourth of the deaths in the city of New York are ascribed to cholera infantum, to convulsions and to teething. At all seasons, convulsions furnish, to the classification of the fatal diseases, one of the largest numbers. The croup often dashes the cup of parental hope with an appalling suddenness. Another affection, extremely fatal to children, and into which other maladies easily pass, is dropsy of the brain; which, when it becomes seated, is necessarily though not painfully mortal. Complaints of the bowels also exhaust the feeble powers of a life so precarious. Scrofula, often transmitted by hereditary descent, exhibits itself in a variety of forms, and frequently makes a brief existence anxious and full of distress. Perhaps the proportion of such deaths to all beside is greater rather than less, as society advances from barbarism to refinement. The savage wanders not far from the region of his birth; and local diseases fasten chiefly upon strangers. If the frame of the young parbarian has survived the first shock of exposure to the rudeness of the forest state, it will not be very liable to those imperceptible assaults which fix disease in the little children just escaped from their delicate cradles and warm nurseries. Light causes break upon the firm texture of a system hardened by early dangers. But, through such dangers, many must first have perished. The rough winds may sooner check the early blossom of life from without, although, if it be able to resist them, the inward strength of the plant may afterwards be greater for the trial. Fewer children, it is probable, grow up, amongst the same number that are born, in the wilderness than in the city. But fewer fall by absolute diseases of this class, and more without maladies, through simple exposure, harsh treatment and neglect. In civilized and savage society alike, the younger portion of the human race is thus thinned by causes which are quite unavoidable and resistless. An infant must, as it were, fight his way up to youth through enemies, by whom a large part of the army to which he belongs are cut off on the road. Even youth and manhood are not exempt from such a warfare; all are exposed, some sink, and many escape for other dangers. XXIII. Death in Childbirth. "Visiting the bridal bower, Death hath levelled root and flower." SOUTHEY. ONE form of death was the peculiar remembrancer of the original order in transgression. As woman had first yielded, so she was to bear her own special sorrow. The pains amidst which a child is born into the world are sometimes death; and they link themselves with diseases, their precursors and their consequences, through which the very season of highest joy is also a season of apprehension and anxiety, and sometimes of rapid transition into bitter mourning. With such mourning Jacob wept at Bethlehem, over the beloved wife of his youth, Rachel, who gave him Benjamin at the price of her own life. The daughterin-law of Eli, when she heard of the slaughter of her husband and his brother, the defeat of Israel, and the capture of the ark of God, bowed herself and travailed; and died, after she had given birth and a melancholy name to an infant son-the glory departed." secular history, similar scenes arrest our eyes as we look along that course of events, which, indeed, can scarcely be traced in its domestic influences, except where the palaces of the great and royal have fallen in its way. The young Princess Charlotte, daughter of George the Fourth, carried with her to such a grave the In warmest hopes of a nation. Joanna, sister of Richard the First, and Blanche, sister of his Queen, died thus, both within a few days; and thus died Isabella, the second Queen of Richard the Second; Elizabeth, Queen of Henry the Seventh; Isabella, Queen of Portugal, and Jane Seymour, mother of Edward the Sixth. Whether it be that the young and lovely are pre-eminently exposed to such peril, or that the union of joyous expectations with forebodings too fatally realized gives a sad charm to such deaths, or that the approaching hour casts a peculiar, tender shadow over the spirit of the sufferer, or that there seems something like an involuntary generosity in dying that another may have life, whatever be the exact cause, such deaths are remembered with an interest all their own. child dates his own existence, with a mysterious, affectionate gratitude, from the dying hour of a mother whom he never beheld. But very often the spirits of mother and child have departed almost together; and the solemn seal of death, placed on the volume of one life, has left that of another unopened for this world. A It is probable that this cause of death, also, is far more fatal in a refined state of society than amongst barbarians. But, even in our own cities, scarcely one birth in two hundred is mortal to the parent: scarcely one death, in as large a number, is in childbed. This cause, as almost the only stroke peculiar to the one sex, may be placed in the balance against the manifold accidents which attend on the more active pursuits of the other. It is not sufficient to equalize the scales; and the average age of the female sex is the greatest. Although foremost in that sin which brought death into the world, that sex has clasped with readiest affection |