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CAUSES OF DEATH.
I have little to add to the information which may be gathered
at a glance from Tables Nos. V., VI., & IX. There is nothing in these
that calls for detailed notice, with two exceptions—first, that the
deaths from diseases of the respiratory organs were unusually
numerous, this, to my mind, being amply accounted for by the
circumstance that the winter was so unusually severe and long.
The other matter is more important, and I refer to it only from a
strong feeling of duty. 26 cases of death from puerperal fever are
recorded as having occurred during the past year, as well as 35
cases of peritonitis, some of which it is not at all unlikely were
cases of puerperal peritonitis. This is a very much larger number
than usual. The necessity for never relaxing care, may be the
lesson our profession should learn from these facts, and I trust I
may be pardoned referring to what perhaps may be now and then,
I do not say, forgotten, but by pressure of work, overlooked.
It is clearly our duty to watch with jealous eye every possible
inlet through which disease may find its way into the body. Our
profession is doing a great work when it busies itself in curing
disease, but it is doing an infinitely greater work in endeavouring to
prevent it. Of curative medicine it may be said that it has saved its