HH62/2/STIRLI/37

Transcription

[Page] 36

complete isolation of infected cases, and strict dairy and cattle
inspection - and so on. Of course, most of these preventive means
more or less overlap each other. Isolation is good against enteric
fever and smallpox, and sufficient food is good against typhus, but
all the same, the measures just noted have a special bearing on
the special diseases.
Infant Mortality. - There is just one other statistical test
which must be applied in forming an opinion as to the health
conditions of the county. Insanitary conditions connected with
dwelling-houses have a greater effect on the infant population
than on adults. It will be necessary, therefore, to see whether
the low general death-rate which prevails in the Small Town
Districts, and the higher rate which prevails in the Rural
Districts, extend to the infant population. For this purpose a
new statistical standard has to be set up - that, namely, of the
ratio of deaths under one year of age, to the total births occurring
during the year; and for convenience this is usually stated as the
"Deaths under one year, per 1000 births." Table IX. gives the
facts.

TABLE IX.
COUNTY OF STIRLING.

[Table Inserted]

[Page] 37

In all Scotland, during the same period, the average rate was
113 in the Small Town Districts and 90 in the Mainland-Rural
Districts. So that the low all-age rate which prevails in the
Small Town Districts of the county is shared in by infants, while
in the Rural Districts infants have a mortality higher by 50 per
cent. than prevails in Scotland as a whole in the corresponding
group of the population.
It is necessary to bear in mind that in these comparisons be-
tween Stirlingshire and Scotland the latter does not yield a standard
of mortality which ought to satisfy the former. The Lord Advocate,
in introducing the Local Government Bill of 1889, said that the
Public Health Act had been practically a dead letter in the
County Districts. Clearly, therefore, while the death-rates con-
sequent on this sanitary inactivity may form a convenient measure
by which to gauge the health of the county, the conditions which
produce these rates are merely the starting-point, and not the goal
of the new administration.

JOHN C. McVAIL.