Segar. — Insanity: Some Gomparative Statistics. 



227 



Table II. 



The result is to give us 1,589 lunatics, to which ought to be added the 

 share of idiots to get the total insane for comparison with English figures. 

 But, even ignoring these, this is at the rate of 1 in 164-5 — a very consider- 

 able change from the actual 1 in 118-9, and approaching pretty closely to 

 the 1 in 173 of England and Wales which Dr. Hay takes for comparison, 

 especially when we remember that the dealing with quinquennial age-periods 

 does not make by any means a complete correction. 



The design of Table II is not perfect, but perfection cannot be attained 

 with the statistics available. The immigrant population contains large 

 numbers born in Scotland, Ireland, and Australia. Those born elsewhere 

 are relatively so few as to make no material difference in the argument. 

 The Scotch differ from the English only slightly in respect to liability to 

 insanity, and the population of Scotland is distributed with respect to age 

 very similarly to that of England and Wales. Those of English, Welsh, 

 and Scotch birth form the great majority of our immigrant population. 

 Those of Irish and Australian birth are not very unequal in numbers — their 

 contributions to the insane when combined are about equal proportionally 

 to that of the other nationalities — and the age-distributions of the populations 

 of Ireland and Australia vary in opposite directions from that of Great 

 Britain, Ireland having a greater proportion of older and Australia of younger 

 people. So the table does not altogether fail in taking the immigrant popu- 

 lation of New Zealand and finding what the position would be if their age- 

 distributions were similar to those of the native countries of the immigrants. 

 The inference is that there is no appreciable evidence that in the total the 

 immigrant is any more liable to insanity than the people of his native land ; 

 and, even if there were in the mere statistics, the question would arise to 

 what extent the apparent differences were really due to differences of classi- 

 fication and of circumstances in the different countries leading to more or 

 less perfect returns, and differences of asylum accommodation and treat- 

 ment of the insane leading to greater or less longevity. 



