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11
REPORT
OF THE
MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH
FOR THE YEAR 1915.
VITAL STATISTICS.
Population.—In previous years it has been the universal
custom to adopt the Registrar-General's figure of estimated population
to the middle of each year. We have been advised by
the Registrar-General that owing to the war it is no longer possible
to adhere to former methods of estimation of local and
national population based upon census returns.
Men of military age have been largely drafted to military
training centres or abroad. The remainder of the adult population
and to some extent the female population have removed to
areas other than those in which they were recorded by the census.
The census returns therefore are, under these abnormal
conditions, quite unreliable as a factor for calculation.
The Registrar-General points out that for the calculation
of death rates of a district the civil population is obviously the