is probably essential to a
condition of entire vigor of both mind and body.

It has long been believed that maladies of the nervous system are
increasing rapidly in the more crowded portions of the United States;
but I am not aware that any one has studied the death-records to make
sure of the accuracy of this opinion. There can be no doubt, I think,
that the palsy of children becomes more frequent in cities just in
proportion to their growth in population. I mention it here because, as
it is a disease which does not kill but only cripples, it has no place
in the mortuary tables. Neuralgia is another malady which has no record
there, but is, I suspect, increasing at a rapid rate wherever our people
are crowded together in towns. Perhaps no other form of sickness is so
sure an indication of the development of the nervous temperament, or
that condition in which there are both feebleness and irritability of
the nervous system. But the most unquestionable proof of the increase of
nervous disease is to be looked for in the death statistics of cities.

There, if anywhere, we shall find evidence of the fact, because there we
find in exaggerated shapes all the evils I have been defining. The best
mode of testing the matter is to take the statistics of some large city
which has grown from a country town to a vast business hive within a
very few years. Chicago fulfils these conditions precisely. In 1852 it
numbered 49,407 souls. At the close of 1868 it had reached to 252,054.
Within these years it has become the keenest and most wide-awake
business centre in America. I owe to the kindness of Dr. J.H. Rauch,
Sanitary Superintendent of Chicago, manuscript records, hitherto
unpublished, of its deaths from nervous disease, as well as the
statement of each year's total mortality; so that I have it in my power
to show the increase of deaths from nerve disorders relatively to the
annual loss of life from all causes. I possess similar details as to
Philadelphia, which seem to admit of the same conclusions as those drawn
from the figures I have used. But here the evil has increased more
slowly. Let us see what story these figures will tell us for the Western
city. Unluckily, they are rather dry tale-tellers.

The honest use of the mortuary statistics of a large town is no easy
matter, and I must therefore ask that I may be supposed to have taken
every possible precaution in order not to exaggerate the reality of a
great evil. Certain di