URBAN MORTALITY.

A recent weekly Bulletin of the Chicago Health Department contains a discussion of urban death rates that gives some encouraging indications of improved city sanitation. In 1893 the claimed Chicago death rate of 16.92 per thousand of population was denounced as an impossible figure for any city with over 1,000,000 inhabitants. No ratio less than 18 per thousand could be accepted was the verdict of an eminent sanitary statistician of that day. At the present time, according to the Bulletin, New York is the only city of the first class that still sustains the above assertion, its mortality in 1902 was 18.75, while that of London was 17.70, and that claimed for Chicago 14.53. The present health administration of New York City has, however, in one year reduced the death ratio more than 14 per cent., and therefore promises well to bring its statistics down below the alleged "impossible" figure