THE HEALTH OF HOBART. 



BY 



R. M. JOHNSTON, F.L.S. 



(Read 28tli May, 1896.) 



DuRiNCx the years 1887, 1888, 1889, and 1891, the City of 

 Hobart, in common with the principal cities of Australia, was 

 visited by a most severe and extraordinary epidemic wave of 

 typhoid fever. Although, locally^ the G^eneral death-rate from 

 all causes, and for all ages, was not materially increased above 

 the years preceding the epidemic, still the mortality of persons 

 in the prime of life, especially males between the ages of 20 

 and 35 years, was unusually large. The alarm caused by this 

 severe visitation very naturally raised a keen enquiry into the 

 sanitary condition of the city ; and many intelligent persons, 

 believing that the epidemic was mainly or solely due to local 

 causes, and particularly to defective drainage and other 

 imperfect sanitary provisions, have since made vigorous and 

 continuous demands for a drastic reform of our sanitary 

 system. To aid in this praiseworthy endeavour, statistical 

 comparisons with other Australian cities are by such persons 

 frequently placed before the people with the object of showing 

 that, but for our defective system of sanitation, the typhoid 

 epidemic would not have appeared, or that its intensity, at 

 least, would have been very much reduced. During the last 

 three years, fortunately, the city has been free from typhoid in 

 the epidemic form, and the death-rate from this and all other 

 preventible causes have never been so low. Whatever may be 

 the cause or combination of causes which, during the last 

 three years, have raised the City of Hobart into a healthier 

 state than that of any other period of its history, and have 

 constituted it pre-eminently as among the healthiest cities of 

 the world, it is obvious that local, artificial, or sanitary 

 provisions have had very little to do with it, for a similar fall 

 in preventible causes of death, if not so great, is distinctly 

 traceable throughout Australia and Tasmania, generally during 

 the same period, as shown in the following table : — 



