HH62/1/DUMFRI/37

Transcription

[Page] 36

Mortality. - Before entering on my duties I had, through the
courtesy of the Registrar-General, an opportunity of examining
the Death Registers for the years 1881-89 of the forty-five
Registration Districts of the County. From these I compiled
certain tables too elaborate for publication in this Report, but some
of the figures may be usefully quoted and compared with those
for Scotland and its Mainland Rural Districts for the same periods.
The Rates for the Mainland Rural Districts form a fairer subject
for comparison with those of the County Districts of Dumfriesshire
than do the rates for the whole of Scotland, compiled as they are
from large urban as well as rural populations. The rates I select
for this purpose are in addition to the total death-rate, the infant
mortality, the zymotic (by which I mean the death-rates from - pox,
measles, diphtheria, whooping-cough, typhus, enteric and continued
fevers, and diarrhœa), and the phthisical. They will be found in
table VII. The total or crude death-rate is not one that can be
relied upon as a satisfactory test of the healthy or unhealthy state of
a district. It depends in part on conditions that may not be
amenable to sanitary influences, such, for example, as the age-
distribution, the social status, and the occupations of the people.
A population in which there is a large number of healthy young
adults will probably show a lower rate than a district where young
children or aged individuals predominate, while a manufacturing
centre may be expected to show higher rates than a residential.
On the other hand, young children are so extremely susceptible to
unhealthy surroundings that their mortality, expressed as "Deaths
under 1 year per 1000 Births," has been held by many sanitarians
to be a fair test of the health of a district. It must not, however,
be forgotten that this mortality may be influenced by other causes,
such as illegitimacy, hand-feeding, &c., so that in itself it is not
sufficient to warrant a definite conclusion. The Zymotic and
Tubercular or Phthisical deaths, depending, as they do, so largely
on preventable causes, afford more reliable evidence. The table
shows that while, as might have been expected, the curves of the
various rates show greater variations than do those for Scotland
and its Mainland Rural Districts, the mean annual mortalities, with
the exception of that of Infant deaths, come out lower than those
of Scotland but higher than those of the Mainland Rural Districts.

[Page] 37

TABLE VII.
DEATH-RATES per 1000 Persons Living.

[Table inserted]