View report page

10
having occurred, during the past quarter, but 2 deaths only in excess
of the number recorded in the three months immediately preceding—
the difference being that between 280 and 282—thus shewing but a
very slight increase considering the number of deaths (92) registered
in the past quarter as the result of lung diseases exclusively. In order,
however, to show that 282 deaths, occurring in a quarter comprising
three of the most uncongenial months in the year, is not an excessive
mortality, it is only necessary to compare the number of deaths in the
three months we are now reviewing with the number registered in the
corresponding quarter of the previous year, 1856. If this be done, a
difference in favour of the quarter just past of as many as 30 deaths
will be exhibited—the number, in the December quarter of 1856, being
as high as 312. "With this fact, then, before us, we are fully justified
in saying that the public health of the district is improving.
Zymotic Diseases.
But there is another fact to which reference may be very fairly made,
as affording proof of the value of sanitary improvements in diminishing
the rate of mortality. Taking six of the principal zymotic diseases
that have proved fatal during the Christmas quarters of the two years
of 1856 and 1857, and placing the numbers of deaths of each period in
opposite columns, there will be exhibited a clear gain of 17 lives in
favour of the latter.
Zymotic Diseases.
Deaths in December Quarter,
1856.
Deaths in December Quarter,
1857.
Small Pox 1 0
Measles 5 0
Scarlet Fever 8 3
Hooping Cough 12 5
Diarrhoea 5 9
Fever, Typhus & Typhoid 10 7
Totals 41
24
It cannot, certainly, be denied that the favourable temperature and
other genial atmospheric influences of the last quarter may have