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4
To favourable atmospheric conditions, to thermal and other influences
consequent upon a genial season, and may he a season of local prosperity,
it would be but just, perhaps, to attribute some of the saving of life
referred to, but I apprehend the influences I have named, were neither
bo great nor so obvious during the past three months, as to warrant
a belief that they had of themselves operated to effect a difference in
the rate of mortality, to the extent of 68 lives saved beyond the
average.
Be this however as it may, there is not, nor can there be, any fallacy
in the figures I have used. The calculation it should be observed, is
made to rest entirely on the Registrar General's returns, and it will be
at once conceded that the comparison I have instituted, is founded on
no meagre or narrow average. It is true it may be urged as an objection
to the correctness of my calculation, that in portions of two years
of the ten from which the quarterly averages have been deduced, there
prevailed in the district a very fearful and fatal epidemic, which must
have greatly increased the number of registered deaths during those
periods; but it should be borne in mind, that the winter quarters of both
the Cholera years, (1849and 1854) were entirely free from the epidemic,
or more properly speaking, the epidemic had altogether ceased in both
those years before the winter quarter of either of them had fairly set in.
The circumstance then, of Cholera having prevailed in the district in
the summer and autumn quarters of the two years referred to, cannot
in any way vitiate the favourable result of my calculation; on the contrary,
its evident tendency is to improve the point upon which I have
ventured to base that calculation, since the cholera which prevailed in
portions of the September and December quarters of 1849 and 1854,
must have considerably diminished the mortality of the March quarters
following those periods, by reason of the disease having removed many
of the weak and unhealthy who would, in all probability, had they survived
the epidemic of the one quarter, have somewhat largely contributed
to swell the death rate of the next. I mention this because I have
no desire to force the fact of which I have been speaking, into an importance
which it might not be thought to deserve. If then, less deaths
by 68 can be shewn to have taken place in the quarter, than the average
number which occurred in ten other corresponding periods, it cannot be
a very unreasonable conclusion to arrive at, that some good has been
effected, some valuable lives saved to the community, by the measures
recommended by your Officers of Health, and carrie'l out under the