View report page

5
authority of your board. If this were not so, I fear we should be constrained
to fall back upon that no very flattering alternative of considering
that all the legislation of the Board, and all the labour of its
Officers, had been exercised in vain.
Mortality from Zymotic Diseases.
The diseases classed under the head " Zymotic," (a word derived from
the Greek, and signifying to ferment) include all epidemic, endemic,
contagious and infectious maladies, and they are such as are generally
considered to a great extent preventible, or, I should rather say, their
causes are deemed much more within our power to remove, or to mitigate,
than are the causes of many of the ordinary diseases which afflict mankind.
This being the case, it is clear that a due consideration of the
death rates from these peculiar maladies must be of the utmost importance
in any attempted estimate of the healthiness or unhealthiness of
particular localities.
In the March quarter of last year (1856), it appears that as many as
3 7 deaths were registered from six of the most frequent, and the most
fatal diseases of the Zymotic Class, viz:—Smallpox, Measles, Scarlet
Fever, Hooping Cough, Diarrhoea, and Typhus Fever; whilst in the
quarter just expired, 30 deaths only took place in the entire district
from these maladies.
When it is considered that the deaths in the last quarter, occasioned
by the above named diseases, occurred in an increased population, and
that the three months through which we have just passed, have not been
marked by any very favourable conditions tending to prevent the occurrence,
or the spread of Zymotic Disease, the saving of seven lives under
this head will appear no slight one to record as the result of a stricter
observance of the laws of health.
In the March quarter of 1856, as many as six deaths occurred in the
district from small-pox alone. A reference to the tables in the appendix
will show that happily, out of an estimated population of near 60,000
souls, not a single individual died of this fearful disease, during the
quarter just expired.
Fully assured of the prophylactic value of vaccination when properly
and carefully performed, your Medical Staff have neglected no opportunities
since they have been in office, of furthering this most important
branch of preventive medicine ; and perhaps to increased exertions in