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misunderstood. I should be the first to admit the value of correct
statistical information, and also to acknowledge the accuracy with
which the Registrar General collates the returns, and the consequent
debt that sanitary science owes to him. I am quite ready to admit
that an abnormal death-rate, like a tell-tale hand, calls upon us to
examine the internal working of the machine and the causes of its
altering its accustomed position, although we must be prepared to
find that circumstances are at work to effect the change, other than
those of a sanitary nature.
It appears more than ever now-a-days necessary to make the
fact clear that the death-rate, taken alone, is not the sure and certain
indication of the sanitary state of a community (bad or good) that
some would have you believe. The majority of people have not the
time, supposing even that they had the will, to make more than a
superficial and cursory examination of sanitary statistics, and they
are naturally somewhat taken by so ready a method of estimating
sanitary progress, and arriving at the results of sanitary labour, as
the death-rate affords. They do not at the same time inquire, as
they ought, what are the circumstances that influence the death-rate,
and how far we can rely upon it as an accurate and truthful indication
of prosperity, or the reverse. The various circumstances influenceing
the death-rate have been pointed out with great clearness by
Dr. Letheby. For example to begin with, see how largely the
deaths must be affected by the migatory habits of the people, the
coming in and the going out. On the one hand, we have the coming
into the town of the young healthy life (the servant, the mechanic,
the clerk) reared in the country village. This it is manifest must
have a tendency to diminish the death-rate of the town, whilst the
loss of the life from the village, although the gain of the town,
necessarily increases the death-rate of the village, for it decreases
the population of the village. On the other hand, and conversely,
the migration from the town into the village either of the weak and of
the ailing (going into the country to die) unfitted by some slow chronic
disease perhaps, for the demands of a city life, or again, of those
who have borne in the City the heat and the burden of the day, and
who at the close of their life seek rest and ease in the country village,
must of necessity increase the village death-rate, whilst it relieves
the town death-rate. Imagine two such places. The country
village sending its strength to the town, and the town sending its