View report page

10
towns, it is manifest that the death-rate alone can
never be regarded as a truthful exponent of the
sanitary condition of any locality, for where the
death-rate is large the proportion of births is also
considerable, and the population is generally on the
increase. On the other hand, as Mr. Rumsey
remarks in one of his essays on State medicine,
where the death-rate has been lessened, as the
result of improvement in domestic management,
and in medical treatment, and owing to the removal
or absence of those more virulent agents of
destruction which, by sharp and decisive strokes,
prematurely sever the thread of life, it often
happens that the sickly and infirm period of
existence has been prolonged—probably in a
greater degree than even life itself; chronic
diseases, or, at least, functional disorder have been
increased; the vital force is lowered; man's work
is arrested; his duties are unperformed; and his
objects fail, although he still lives. Weakly
diseased children are now mercifully helped, as
they never were in olden time, to grow up into
weakly ailing adults, who, in their turn, propagate
with abnormal fecundity an unsound progeny. So
that while we lessen the death-rate of a district, we
may be actually increasing the sickness and social
infirmities of it. The death-rate alone, therefore,
gives no indication of the sanitary wellbeing of a
place. It must be conjoined with the birth-rate, the