View report page

8
MEDICAL OFFICER'S REPORT.
Gentlemen,
I have the honour to place before you to-day the twenty-fifth
Annual Report of the Sanitary condition of the St. Saviour's
District.
During the past year there were causes of disease in operation
from which, if they could have been foreseen, we should have
predicted a probable increase of mortality. In large towns, and
especially in such districts as this, the wear and tear of the
physical frame demand a good deal of animal food. This, from
the almost unprecedented price of meat, the poor have been unable
to obtain.
The commencement and the close of the year were marked by
such a prevalence of dense fog that, during one week, twenty-six
deaths were caused by diseases of the respiratory organs alone.
It is satisfactory, therefore, that I am enabled to report a diminution
of eighty-one deaths as compared with the year preceding.
The registered number of deaths which occurred in Christchurch
was 382, and in St. Saviour's 316, making a total of 698
deaths. The total number of births was 1,013, comprised in the
following details:—
Christchurch Males 242
Females 237
479
St. Saviour Males 266
Females 268
534
1,013