Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057352).pdf/421

 SUL 413 The registraton of deaths has been attempted during the last 5 or 6 years, but hitherto the numbers registered have been very far below the truth. The numbers for the last four years were- Registered deaths per 1,000 of population. 1A70 1871 1872 1873 183 18.35 7.93 5-8 It is needless to say that these are altogether impossible figures repre- senting as they do an average duration of life of somewhere between 55 and 180 years. The agency at present employed for the collection of these statistics is that of the village chaukidars who are called upon to report the deaths that take place in their villages once a month, or oftener in epidemic seasons, at the police stations. It was hoped when this agency was adop- ted in 1870, that it would yield better results than the one previously employed, and for some time the number of deaths registered was consi- derably higher than it had been, but the returns of the last two years show that the improvement was only temporary. Endemic diseases. The principal endemic diseases of the district are fevers, of which the prevailing types are intermittent and remit- tent. Continued fevers are also met with, but they bear a small proportion to the periodic, and appear to be merely aggravated cases of intermittent or remittent, and without any specific character of their own, Fever, pure and simple as it is met with in this district, is, in fact, altogether of the moalarious" kind. Of 2,000 cases of fever treated at the Sultanpur Dispensary the pro- portion of quotidian agues was said to be ths, of tertian about of quar- tans about ith, and of remittents about th. None were entered as “continued, but it is probable that some of the remittents would more properly have been so named. In severe cases the remission is often very slight or not at all perceptible. It is impossible to say precisely to what extent fever prevails amongst the general population. Amongst the prisoners in the Sultanpur Jail the average annual number of attacks during the four years, from 1870 to 1873, was 13 per cent. of average strength, and amongst the Sultanpur police during the same period it was about 15 per cent. Assuming that the general population suffered in an equal degree, and making allowance for repeated attacks in the same individual, it is no extravagant estimate to assume that at least 10 per cent of the population suffers every year from fever. No trustworthy statistics with regard to the death-rate from fever can be given. The mortuary returns, as already stated, are unreliable, and the mortality amongst the police and the prisoners is no criterion, as it is affected by the treatment the patients receive. Considering the great preponderance of the comparatively non-fatal intermittent type it is