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13
From the above table it will be observed that both in Willesden
and in the 76 great towns the most favourable season as regards
infantile mortality is the second quarter; while the third quarter is
the least favourable, by far the greater proportion of deaths among
infants occurring in this quarter.
As regards the year 1907, however, it will be noted that both in
Willesden and the 76 great towns the third quarter forms a most
remarkable exception.
Instead of being the most fatal quarter of the year for infants, it
is the least fatal. So striking a departure from the usual course over
so wide an area must be due to some widely operating and exceptional
condition, and this is to be found in the unseasonable weather experienced
during the summer months of the year.
It may seem remarkable, however, that the season which is most
fatal to infants is most favourable to the aged, who find the most
inimical conditions in the first and last quarters of the year.
Extremes of cold are most injurious to persons of advanced years,
who, in consequence of exposure to these conditions, contract pulmonary
affections which are most fatal. With infants, however, the
relationship between season and mortality is not so direct.
It is not so much extremes of cold, as of heat, which are fatal to
young lives. If the number of deaths in the third quarter of 1907 be
compared with the number of deaths in the second quarter of the
3 preceding years, the numerical resemblance is striking.
It will be seen by reference to the Meteorological Tables that the
temperatures of the third quarter approximated more to those of the
second quarters of other years. The summer and early autumn of
1907, in fact, were cold, and the four-foot earth thermometer, which
measures only the increments of heat slowly absorbed by the earth's
surface with the advance of the season, never at any period registered
a temperature higher than 55° F.
This phenomenon is not only rare, but very important.