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11
cough and croup, 182;—making, from this class of
disorders, an annual average of about 1250 deaths—
nearly two-fifths of the entire mortality.
My tables will show you that the different seasons
of the year have pressed somewhat differently on
human life; and there is exhibited in them a point
of some interest, to which I would beg your attention.
In your healthier sub-districts it is easy to
perceive the influence—the almost inevitable influence,
exerted by the inclemency of winter against
the aged and feeble. In your unhealthier sub-districts,
this effect is completely masked, and summer
becomes the fatal season; its higher temperature
acting in some sort as a test of defective sanitary
conditions, and giving to the several local causes of
endemic disease an augmentation of activity and
virulence.
On the facts which these tables set forth, I have
nothing further to say than would consist in a repetition
of arguments already submitted to your notice.
In my third annual report, especially, I endeavoured
to lay before you the conclusions which are fairly
deducible from the proportions of early death, and
from the partial allotment of particular diseases.
These conditions, indeed, are in obvious mutual
relation. To human life there has been affixed a
normal range of duration; and when it prematurely
fails—when children perish in the cradle, or adults
amid the glow of manhood, the exception in every
case is a thing to be investigated and explained.