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for two or three months, but, owing to the nonappearance
of what is called the Autumnal Rise,
there was no necessity for doing so.
The failure of this Autumnal Rise is a somewhat
unusual circumstance, and was quite unexpected.
To understand what is meant bv the term it may
be explained that almost invariably each autumn
there is a pronounced increase in the .incidence of
infectious disease throughout the country, due it is
believed, amongst other things, to seasonal and
climatic influences. Last year, however, no such
increase took place, which may have been due to
the unusual cold and wet; if anything, there was a
decrease in the number of cases, as may be gathered
from the fact that the number of admissions during
the last quarter was actually less than at any other
period of the year.
To illustrate this further it is necessary only to
refer to the table of monthly admissions, when it
will be seen that the admissions per month range
from a maximum in January of 120, almost regularly
down each month to a minimum of 45 in December.
If we take the admissions per quarter and
compare them with those of the previous year it is