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Health of the City

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Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 10, 1878

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 4, No. 38.

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Health of the City.

By Editor

LAST month there were 52 deaths in this city, thirteen of them resulting from diseases classified as zymotic. Most deaths under this heading are from causes which are preventable. They may be the result of imperfect drainage, bad water, or other forms of uncleanliness. It is certainly far from creditable that such should cause one quarter of the deaths reported in our city. There must be a multitude of cess-pools that have escaped the vigilance of the health authorities; there must be thousands of people who "take the chances" on well water which can hardly fail to be polluted. But, after all, there is no other city from which we have any recent accounts, that can show as good a record. We have a population of 45,000 people and our annual death rate per thousand people would be 13.87. We give below the record for some of the principal American cities, with the month last reported, population, and rate per 1,000:—
CITY. POPULATION. MONTH. RATE.
St. Louis 500,000 August 13.68
Oakland 45,000 Sept. 13.87
Minneapolis 44,000 July 14.18
Dayton 36,000 August 14.33
Erie 27,000 August 14.42
San Francisco 300,000 July 14.73
Detroit 125,000 August 15.16
Toledo 50,000 July 15.60
Baltimore 350,000 August 15.81
Syracuse 60,000 August 16.67
Sacramento 25,000 July 17.42
Rochester 70,000 July 17.49
Cincinnati 280,000 August 17.59
New Haven 60,000 August 18.40
Brooklyn 528,000 August 19.02
Philadelphia 850,000 August 19.05
Elmira 20,000 August 20.60
Chicago 460,000 August 20.85
Providence 100,000 August 21.00
Mobile 40,000 July 23.14
Pittsburgh 145,000 August 26.00
Washington 160,000 July 35.47
New Orleans 210,000 August 73.71
We can thus better realize the ravages of yellow fever in New Orleans, by applying the death rate to Oakland. Had it been the same here, we would have had 277 deaths last month instead of only 52. Oakland has usually been noted for a very low rate of mortality, heading the list of cities. There is probably something exceptional in the case of St. Louis, for its reported rate is far lower than ordinary—lower than can long be possible in a thickly populated city.
—Oakland Daily Times.