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7
due to heart disease occurred in people over 65 years where death
was probably the result of general exhaustion resulting from old
age, and heart disease appears in the death certificate because death
occurs only when the heart fails to function any longer. Senility
as a cause of death is very rarely seen on death certificates in these
days, and there is little doubt that many deaths which were in
former days ascribed to senility are now certified as due to heart
disease.
The next most common cause of death was cancer which was
responsible for 79 deaths, as compared with 91 deaths for the previous
year. Pneumonia was responsible for 33 deaths and
bronchitis for 24. Tuberculosis of all forms was the cause of
death in 26 cases as compared with 51 in 1936.
The number of deaths due to the principal zymotic diseases,
enteric fever, smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping
cough and diarrhoea (in children under 2 years) was 14. Of this
number five were due to whooping cough, three to. diphtheria, and
one each to scarlet fever and measles. There were four deaths of
children under 2 years of age, caused by diarrhoea or gastroenteritis.
All of these occurred in hospitals outside the district,
to which the children had been admitted.
The zymotic death-rate was 0.26 per 1,000 of population, as
compared with 0.42; for the previous year.
INFANTILE MORTALITY.
The number of deaths occurring in children under 12 months
of age was 32, and the Infantile Mortality Rate 48 per 1,000 live
births. This is an improvement on the rate for 1936, which was
54, and is almost as good as that for 1935, which was 47.
The individual causes of the infantile deaths and the age at
which death took place are shown in Table V. Of the total of 32
deaths, no fewer than 11 took place during the first week of life, and