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20
The above table exhibits the by no means agreeable fact that the deaths
from the zymotic class of diseases comprise about one-fourth of the total
mortality of the year. As I have before observed, the younger portion of
the population suffered most from the severe winter of the past year, and
hence by comparing the mortality with the previous year, it is found that 89
infants under one year died in 1860 against 75 in the preceding year, 95
from 1 to 5 years against 54, and 28 from 5 to 10 years against 12, the
total mortality between the period of birth and 10 years of age exhibiting
an increase of 50 per cent. over the total at the same ages for 1859.
Next to the zymotic class of diseases, those affecting the respiratory
organs were the most fatal, resulting in death in 61 instances, whilst the
tubercular class, which includes phthisis, carried off 53 persons, the majority
being of the industrial or labouring portion of the population (which is
indeed the case under all the forms of mortal disease), and continues to point
very decidedly to the necessity of carrying our sanitary improvements into
such places as will secure to the poor the full benefits to be derived from
them. Some of my colleagues will have pointed out in their Reports the
more noteworthy features of the local and general mortality tables, applicable
alike to all the sub-districts, and therefore there is the less need for me to
enlarge upon this portion of my own report.
It is as well, however, to state that the number of deaths given iu the
table of mortality inserted above, and transferred to the general table in the
Appendix, differs in a slight degree from the number shewn in the annual
summary of the Registrar-General, particularly as to the mortality from the
seven principal forms of epidemic diseases. This arises from the circumstance
of one or two deaths from that class of maladies having doubtless
been tabulated in the office of the Registrar-General under the primary
diseases given in the medical certificates, whereas, from the knowledge I
have personally had of the actual causes of death in these cases being from
diseases that had, long after the primary ones had subsided, supervened
upon the original symptoms, I have adopted the latter in my own tabulation
; hence the slight difference of two in the totals of the epidemic table of
this Report, and the Returns of the Registrar-General; and hence also will
probably arise some slight difference in the numbers iu the two returns
under the separate zymotic diseases.
Birth-rate.
The natural increase of the population by births has been large during the
past year—larger than in 1859 by 14, the number in 1860 being 608, and
in the previous year 594. The deaths for the past year being 429, it
follows that the excess of births over deaths is 179.
Inspection of Houses and Nuisances.
The improvement in this respect is of the most gratifying character (vide
table 6, Appendix), for whilst the houses and premises visited have been