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6
diarrhoea carries off but 1 victim in the winter
and spring quarters, but takes 13 in the
summer, and 6 in the autumn quarter. Hooping
cough has its least fatal period during the hot
summer months, and its greatest harvest during
the changeable weather of spring. Scarlet fever
carries off more victims in the autumn and winter
quarters than in the spring and summer, whilst the
spring and summer are most favourable to measles.
Altogether, the spring and the summer quarters are
most favourable to zymotic disease; 76 deaths occur
in these two quarters against 45 in the autumn and
winter. This is confirmatory of the view that the
animal poisons which produce contagious disease
require, like animal and vegetable germs, a certain
amount of temperature to render them active.

Although not the most striking from the number
of its victims, the most alarming of these forms of