Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/219

 mortality of a parish, from an inspection of the register in that parish, because a large number of the inhabitants may have been interred in other parishes, or in private burial-grounds, or in those attached to dissenting places of worship. As a proof of the great inaccuracy that would accrue from a calculation founded upon parochial registers, the number of interments stated to have taken place in the parish church-yard of St. Philip and Jacob, would give a ratio of mortality amounting to no more than 1 in 82, to the most. ill-fed and ill-clothed portion of the population of Bristol. If deaths, instead of burials, were registered, and in the places where they occur, information of the most important kind might be deduced from them, relative to the comparative salubrity of particular districts. We trust that this change, together with many others greatly needed in the system of registering, will, ere long, be effected by the legislature.