Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 1.djvu/97



SOME OBSERVATIONS

BY J. K. WALKER, M. D. HUDDERSFIELD.

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N a recent paper on the late population returns, I took occasion to submit some account of the relative decrease of mortality in different parts of the empire, and, at the same time, I endeavoured to trace the operation of those causes, which appeared to me most influential in producing this happy change. In prosecuting this enquiry, I was induced to compare the last returns with those of the ten years preceding, and it was a gratifying result of such comparison to find that, in by far a majority of towns, a very considerable decrement had taken place in the rate of infant mortality. But, though this was strikingly the case in many, yet, in other parts, this declension is less obvious. In some of the manufacturing districts, the number of children who have been buried, under one year old, was one fourth of the whole number of burials in the last ten years. In one report, I observe the number of children who have been buried, under the age of six, is more than half of the whole number. But, as the highest rate of infant mortality has usually been in large towns, so has the diminution of deaths