
by thousands of laws, against the attack of the assassin and the thief, we find that it is but an infinitesimal portion of their codes that is devoted to the actual conservation and prolongation of u Any improvement in the treatment of disease, and any additio.n to medical science, will tend ultimately to the diminution of human suffering; but the registration of the causes of death is calculated to exercise a still more direct influence upon public health. Diseases are more easily prevented than cured, and the first step to their prevention is the discovery of their exciting causes.
The registry will shew the agency of these causes by numerical facts, and measure the intensity of their influence. ' The annual rate of mortality in some districts will be found to be 4 per cent., in others 

{'paper_id': '4734409', 'title': 'On Medical Statistics', 's2_url': 'https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:4734409', 'source': 'S2ORC'}