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36
Zymotic Diseases.— Seeing how large has been the
increase of population recently, it would have excited no
very great surprise had the number of deaths from all causes
been infinitely greater than it was in 1868. Relatively,
however, to the estimated population of that year, the
deaths due to the Zymotic class of diseases were greatly in
excess. If that portion of the present table relating more
particularly to this class of maladies be compared with that
inserted in the last report, it will be seen that five of the
seven principal disease named proved fatal in a much
greater number of instances than in the previous year. The
deaths resulting from Measles, for instance, were in excess
of 2, Scarlatina 2, Diphtheria 6, Whooping Cough 4, and
Diarrhœa 9, making a total of 23 deaths from these diseases
above the number registered in 1867. Happily the deaths
due to Small Pox and Fever slightly diminished in the past
year, the former numbering 1, and the latter 5, less than in
the preceding year. In the aggregate, the deaths due to
Epidemic diseases in the past year were 16 in excess of the
number registered in 1867, a circumstance by no means
satisfactory, though almost all the principal diseases of the
non-zymotic class named in the table, claimed a less number
of victims in the past than in the preceding year, thus
in some measure balancing the excessive fatality of epidemic
maladies.
Ages at Death—It is a very natural consequeuce of an
increase in the number of deaths due to Zymotic diseases
that there should be found a larger number of infants and
young persons than usual amongst those who have succumbed
to those diseases. Accordingly the table discloses
the fact of there having been in the past year an excess of
22 deaths above the number registered in the preceding
one of children between birth and 10 years of age. The
number that succumbed under one year was of itself large,
being 23. In the aggregate 72 persons under 20 years of
age died during the year 1868, which is within 16 of onehalf
the mortality at all ages. At the other end of the
scale, the deaths from "old age" or "natural decay" have
not been so numerous as in some former years. These