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the case, and the severance of all connection between the
cistern and the sewer by the overflow pipe ; in fact the
precautions to be adopted so precisely resemble those
recommended for the prevention of Typhoid Fever, that a
more than casual relation between the two diseases may
be predicated.
The mortality from Whooping Cough was in the past
three years 1878, 7l ; 1877, 47 ; and 1876, 60. The
cause of these variations is not known, and the disease is
one over which sanitary measures have but the slightest
influence.
From Scarlatina the mortality varied but little from
the previous year. Whenever a death is registered from
this disease, or wherever a case is known to have occurred,
disinfection is rigidly carried out by sulphurous acid, the
whole of the clothes and furniture of the room occupied by
the patient being treated. Although vigilantly looked for,
no case has occurred of a fresh outbreak of the disease
where this plan has been adopted in the sub-district.
The mortality from Measles has diminished to 6 from
47 and 20 in the two preceding years.
From Small Pox a much smaller mortality has to be
recorded, viz., 5 cases in contradistinction to 28 in 1877.
The lessons taught during the last epidemic as to the
efficacy of vaccination in conferring invulnerability to this
disease, more especially if tested by re-vaccination after
puberty, would carry conviction to any ordinarily constituted
mind. The mental constitution which is unable
to discern, and can refuse to acknowledge the benefits
conferred upon mankind by vaccination, being at the same
time acutely sensitive to the various fables beloved of the
anti-vaccinators; is so obtuse in the one instance, and so
hypersensitive in the other, that ordinary logical reasoning
cannot follow out the mental processes involved.
The other Zymotic Diseases call for no special remark,
except that deaths from the diseases of childbirth declined
to 2 against 8 and 10 in the two previous years.