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those of the non-affected area, which comprises the remainder
of the Parish. I may as well mention that the figures for 1896
do not quite agree with the total number of notifications
received, but this is due to the presence of duplicate notifications,
although these have been excluded as far as possible.
The notifications have been divided into calendar months, and
as the summer holidays were in July and August, I have
given two sets of figures in these two months. The notifications
received in the holidays are accordingly indicated by
the last set of figures for July and the first set for August.
Furthermore, they are divided under the following headings:—
Children less than three years of age, those whose ages ranged
from three to fifteen and who where presumably school attendants,
and those above school ages.
The supposed school period has again been sub-divided
so as to give the number of notifications for the following age
periods:—3 to 4, 4 to 5, 5 to 10, 10 to 12, 12 to 13, 13 to 14
and 14 to 15.
On examining tables AA and BB the following facts
present themselves for consideration: —(a) That judging from
the notifications there was a considerable increase in the
prevalence of diphtheria in the Parish taken as a whole in
1896 as compared with 1895. (b) This increase, although
shown in the non-affected area, is shown to a greater extent in
the affected, for supposing that the incidence had shown itself
in the non-affected area in the same measure as in the affected,
there would have been, roughly speaking, something like 1,800
cases in the former alone, since the total figures for 1896 are
rather more than 2·8 times as numerous as those for 1895.
On closer examination of the figures for the affected
area we find that the increase is much more marked at some
ages than at others, it being most marked at the ages 4 to 5,
5 to 10, 12 to 13 and 14 to 15; these last two age periods,
however, have so few cases in them that it will be well to
place but little reliance on them. It would thus seem that
from some cause or other in this area there existed a factor
which showed its influence especially on children between the
ages of 4 and 10 and 12 and 13. The factor that first comes
into one's mind is naturally that of school attendance, or in
other words, that children contracted the disease at school,