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21
EPIDEMIC DIARRHŒA
During the year diarrhoea and enteritis caused 70 deaths as compared with 184 deaths from
the same group of diseases in 1911. The striking reduction in the mortality under this head was
due to the unusually cold weather which prevailed throughout the summer months. Diarrhoea in
its epidemic form is chiefly fatal in young children under the age of 5 years. From the Table
on p. 19 it will, however, be seen that more than 43 per cent. of deaths from diarrhoea and enteritis
occurred in persons over 5 years of age, as compared with only 28 per cent. in the preceding year.
This anomalous incidence is due to the fact that the group diarrhoea and enteritis includes a
number of intestinal ailments which attack older persons, which have no special seasonal incidence
and which are consequently not affected by the temperature prevailing in the summer months.
Thus, in spite of one of the hottest and one of the coldest summers on record, the deaths from
diarrhoea and enteritis in persons over the age of 5 years numbered 28 in 1911, and 30 in 1912.
In children under the age of 5, the deaths numbered 156 and 40 respectively in the same two
years. The subject of diarrhoea and its prevention was dealt with at length in my last report
and need not be considered further in a year when the number of deaths from the disease has
been comparatively small.
TUBERCULOSIS
The number of deaths from tuberculosis was 227, the death-rate being 1.32 per 1,000. The
mortality in the years 1901-1912 from phthisis, other tuberculous diseases, and all forms of
tuberculosis is expressed in the following Table as the number of deaths per 100,000 persons
living in the periods to which the death-rates refer.

Since 1900 the death-rate from tuberculosis has varied between extremes of 195 per 100,000
ii: 1904, and 109 in 1910, as compared with a rate of 132 in the year under consideration, and an
average rate of 159 in the ten years 1901-1910. On the whole the figures afford ground for the
hope that the reduction in the mortality from this disease which has occurred in the last six years
will be maintained.
PHTHISIS.
In the year under notice the deaths from tuberculous phthisis, or pulmonary consumption,
numbered 179, and corresponded to a rate of T04 per 1,000 living. They were responsible for
79 per cent., or more than three-quarters of the total deaths from tuberculosis. Persons between
the ages of 15 and 45 years of age—that is to say, in the best working years of life—furnished
more than 58 per cent. of the deaths, the mortality among males being higher
than among females. The death-rate was considerably higher than in 1911, and only 8 per cent.
below the average rate in the decennium 1901-1910.