3 Metaphors for deterioration

The general deterioration in the health of the people is a worse feature of overcrowding even than the encouragement by it of infectious disease.

This deterioration was the natural result of the devastating war which had swept the country, and to the industrial revolution which followed and to which affairs had not been adjusted.

"The gradual extinction of public spirit; the general deterioration of private character, and the exercise of unbridled lust and passion, are the livid hues which tinge with the purple of melancholy and the scarlet of tragedy the later pages of Florentine story.

3 Metaphors for  deterioration