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found is dropsy, cough, tumour, atrophy and various other symptoms,
and some years ago one very conscientious practitioner gave the
cause of death as primary, syphilis, secondary, the act of God. A great
deal of progress has been made in the accuracy of death registration
since those early days, but there is still much room for improvement,
and medical officers of health at any rate will welcome reforms in the
administration of the national statistics of life and death. The first of
these reforms might be with advantage the institution of a confidential
system of death certification, under which system the medical practitioner
might transmit the death certificate to the registrar direct in a sealed
envelope, and such certificate should be looked upon as a confidential
document, subject to the discretion of the Registrar-General.

During the past ten years the infantile death-rate has fallen from
149 to 85 per 1000 births registered.
In a previous table will be seen the infantile mortality per 1000
births for the past ten years.
Deaths of Illegitimate Infants. Of the 207 infants who died
before attaining the age of one year, 14 or 6.7 per cent, were illegitimate,
the mortality amongst them being in the proportion of 154 deaths per
1000 against 83 per 1000 among children born in wedlock.