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has occurred; we are redrafting our conception of health. Formerly
we were apt to define health as some negative quantity,
merely a freedom from disease, but we are far from satisfied now
with that definition. We do not consider a person healthy unless
he is in such a physical condition that he can enjoy life to the full.
The diseases which were particularly fatal in the nineteenth century
now occupy a very small space in our returns, and in a diminishing;
quantity. Small-pox and typhus fever are almost unknown, and
the typhoid and paratyphoid fevers are comparatively rare; very
seldom is there a death from scarlet fever. But in the last quarter
of the nineteenth century, some of these diseases occurred every
vear, and all of them periodically and occasionally.
Infantile mortality appears to have fallen permanently
to the neighbourhood of 50 per 1,000 births; not only has the infantile
mortality been reduced, but the nature and the cause have
been altered. Formerly in the infantile mortality list, diarrhoea
was by far the most formidable disease, and some deaths every
year occurred from suffocation from overlaying.
Another noticeable change has been not only the general
improvement, but the especial improvement of some of the areas.
Formerly the death-rate of the South-West Ward was greatly in
excess of that of the whole district, and. the infantile mortality
was always two or three times higher than that in the rest of the
district. Last year the deaths were distributed through the district
as follows:—
North-East North-West South-East South-West
223 164 140 177
The death-rate in each ward was as follows:-
10.0 0.8 9.2 12.1
Last year the death-rate in the South West Ward was higher than
that of the other wards, but the excess is nothing comparable to
that of former years.
I have pointed out the diseases which have increased in
their incidence and most of these are associated with the altered
age distribution of the population, but there is one cause of death
which has not only relatively but absolutely increased, and that is
deaths from violence. Such causes, of course, as being knocked:
down by a motor vehicle, and being involved in a motor smash
are mostly post-war experiences. The motor car, of course, was
in use before the war, but the transport question has now become
acute question, and an inceasing number of deaths are due to
this cause. Suicide also has become relatively more common, and