MR. J. BAXENDELL ON CHANGES IN MORTALITY. 61 



IX. On Changes in the Rates of Mortality from different 

 Diseases during the Twenty Years 1854-73. By 

 Joseph Baxendell^ F.R.A.S. 



Read December 26th, 1876. 



It is well known to all who take an interest in questions 

 relating to health and disease that the sanitary measures 

 which have been carried out, at great cost, in all parts of 

 the country during the last twenty or thirty years appear 

 to have had no perceptible effect in improving the general 

 state of the public health and reducing the rate of morta- 

 lity ; and a feeling is rapidly gaining ground that the sani- 

 tary schemes which have been imposed upon the country 

 by parliament are either of very questionable utility or have 

 been carried out by local authorities in a very negligent 

 and inefficient manner, while the enormous and rapidly 

 increasing expenditure which they involve is becoming a 

 matter for very serious consideration, and is especially 

 annoying and disappointing when it is seen that they have 

 so far signally failed to produce the results which their 

 promoters so confidently anticipated. Occasionally, when 

 a season or succession of seasons favourable to the public 

 health has reduced the death-rate for a time, sanguine 

 officials have hastily and inconsiderately attributed the re- 

 duction to their so-called sanitary improvements and 

 arrangements ; but when a period is taken sufficiently long 

 to eliminate the influence of changes in the seasons, it is 

 found that no reduction whatever has taken place, but that, 

 on the contrary, the rate has still a slight tendency to in- 



