More than half the deaths in the Natchez bills of mortality occur among strangers who are not enumerated in the census. If these were subtracted the average mortality of the citizens of Natchez during the whole period of ten years would not exceed 1 in 61 per annum; a less degree of mortality for so long a period than any other town or city in the United States can boast of. I have computed the population of Natchez from 1823 to 1834 at an average of 3000-I believe it however to be more. In 1830 when the population had got to its lowest point, and at a season of the year when the town contained the fewest inhabitants, an actual enumeration, by the officers of the United States government, gave 2789 resident citizens. The bills of mortality in 1830 in a population of 2789 make the average mortality for that year only 1 in 34.8-10. Those acquainted with the history of Natchez know that it gradually decreased from 1823 to 1830, when it slowly increased until 1833, and then in less than twelve months nearly doubled its former population. But to make the lowest enumeration the basis of this calculation, the average mortality, during ten years, would be only 1 in 28.5-10, including the whole of the deaths among strangers, including all still born children, and also including the deaths among from five hundred to a thousand negroes annually brought to this city for sale, prior to the total interdiction of the trade by the legislature of Mississippi in 1836. This would give a less mortality than that of Naples, Vienna, Rome, Amsterdam, Edinburg, Dublin, and at least three fourths of London and Paris, and considerably less than that part of Philadelphia inhabited by negroes.

But how happens it, that the average mortality of Natchez, during a period of ten years, has been so small? How happens it, that while in all other places from 1 to 21 to 1 in 53

of the inhabitants have died annually, in Natchez only 1 in 61 of her citizens, for ten years in succession, has perished annually, and only 1 in 30.6 including strangers and boatmen of which she has always had such great numbers? These astonishing results are not owing to any mistake. All the deaths which occur are faithfully registered by the sexton and reported to the city council. The sexton is bound, under a penalty of fifty dollars for every case of omission, to register and report every death. The population is not estimated too high, because in the year 1830 when the census was taken, by comparing the bills of mortality of that year with the exact population returns, the average mortality is found to be considerably less than the computed average for ten years. The people at a distance, hearing of so many epidemics in Natchez, naturally supposed that the mortality must be very great, and that human life was less secure than in almost any other place. But facts of the most indisputable kind prove that Natchez, in ten years, under the most discouraging and disadvantageous circumstances, lost a fewer number of her citizens by death, in proportion to her population, than almost any other town or city in the civilized world. The reason of so gratifying a result is as plain as the noonday sun. Natchez, during the ten years mentioned, protected and encouraged science, and science protected and guarded her citizens. The citizens of Natchez, during these ten years, were protected by strict laws against murderous quacks and empiricism of all kinds. The whole population had confidence in the medical profession, and owing to this confidence, made timely application for medical assistance, whenever they found themselves afflicted with any malady whatever. Other towns and cities may have had as good physicians, but the influence of empirics, the ignorance of the people, and their want of confidence

in the healing art, besides the great numbers, in Europe, who perish for the want of bread and the comforts and necessaries of life, have co-operated to make the healing power and beneficial influences of the medical profession less diffused, felt, and appreciated. But in Natchez, situated in the most favored spot of the most favored land, where plenty and abundance abound, where every inhabitant, bond or free, rich or poor, young or old, has all the solid comforts and necessaries of life at all times at command, the benefits and blessings of the science of medicine were dispersed and diffused throughout her whole population, until the subtle wiles of crafty and designing empirics and pretended reformers, impaired the confidence of the public in the regular medical profession. Leaning with confidence on the arm of science, the citizens of Natchez passed through two yellow fevers, an epidemic cholera, whooping-cough, measles, scarlet fever and small pox, besides the other diseases incident to the climate, and in ten years a fewer number of them perished, in proportion to the population, than in any other town or city from which we have any authentic results. The good effects of confidence in the medical profession, and the benefits to be derived from timely application for medical advice, were clearly demonstrated during the epidemic cholera, which visited this city in May and June of 1833. While in Paris, and many other cities, the ignorant inhabitants, goaded and worked upon by designing empirics, and the venders and fabricators of nostrums, and secret medicines, were accusing the physicians of having poisoned them, consequently refusing and disdaining medical aid and dying by thousands, the good people of Natchez were every where seeking timely medical assistance. The consequence was, that the epidemic, out of the whole population of Natchez in two months, May and June, including strangers, and negroes

brought here for sale, only carried off forty-three individuals. Whereas nearly this number died in a single day in many villages and towns of no greater population, wherever the inhabitants abandoned their physicians and looked to empiricism and to nostrums for safety.

I have thus attempted to show Natchez trusting in and wisely protecting science during the long period of ten yearsthrough all this long lapse of years science being triumphant, amidst circumstances calculated to desolate and depopulate any other city. But it is now my task to review the picture and to exhibit Natchez during a period of four years and nine months-a period, with the exception of three months in 1837, remarkable for its health and entire exemption from epidemic diseases. I will present her to the reader-not leaning upon the arm of science-not confiding exclusively to it—not trusting in it--not protecting it by wise legislation, but letting it go, to follow after ignorant, presuming and fanatical empirics, and seeking safety in the patent nostrums of ignorance and fraud. Before the termination of 1833 the laws of Mississippi, which protected the science of Medicine and guarded the people against ignorant presumers and pretended reformers, were virtually annulled. By the first of January 1834 a host of empirics had made their way into our city, and commenced in good earnest, what they called a reformation in medicine. They first began their operations by using every artifice to destroy the confidence of the public, in the virtue of those remedies and means, which the accumulated experience of ages, has found to be the most effectual in the treatment of a large class of diseases-particularly such as occur in warm climates. They used great and unwearied exertions, not only to prejudice the public against most of the medicines which physicians employed, calling them poisons, but they

endeavored to destroy public confidence in the physicians themselves and to bring contempt and disrepute upon the regular exercise of the medical art. So great was their zeal, they succeeded in weakening public confidence in the medical profession in a greater degree than could have been expected. in so intelligent a community. Some good citizens of Natchez and its vicinity they entirely alienated from it. In some instances they even succeeded in turning those, who owed their lives to the scientific practice of medicine, altogether against it. The natural effect of debility and old age were artfully attributed to the influence of calomel and the lancet. Deaths, which no human means could avert, and which must occur while man is mortal, were said to have been occasioned by poisonous drugs. The more numerous cases, which got sound and well under the use of the very same drugs, were overlooked. Nothing was likewise said of the many remediable cases which proved fatal under the empirical practice-but the welkin was made to ring with every case which got well under it, or which recovered in spite of it.

I now come to apply statistical medicine to that portion of time which has elapsed, since half a dozen or more empirics have located themselves in Natchez to carry out, what they call, a reform in medicine." In other words, I am now about to test the pretended reformation in medicine by the unerring results of time and truth.

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But first I propose to follow up the practice of the regular physicians. A considerable part of the population, generally embracing the more intelligent citizens, were not seduced by the empirics, but continued to employ as formerly, the regular physicians. During the last four years and nine months, omitting the deaths which occurred during the period of the epidemic of 1837, the regular physicians lost 523 patients.