166 PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS—SECTION H. 
accurate, and that lapse of time is alone necessary to render 
sound induction possible. And time—or what is in this case its 
equivalent for many purposes, multiude of accurate individual 
observations—is an indispensable condition. Impatience to arrive 
speedily at some result is fatal to soundness, and is actually the 
cause of much of the doubt with which the science of vital 
statistics especially is regarded by the many. Undue haste 
leads, on the one hand, to resort to calculation to supply the place 
of facts for direct observation of which in sufficient number time 
enough has not elapsed ; on the other to comparisons superficially 
warrantable, but really between unlike things. These errors are 
more than misleading ; they obstruct the truth. 
Tf the lapse of long periods of time be necessary before the 
observations alluded to can accumulate in sufficient number to 
afford trustworthy indications of the vitality of a nation—to 
furnish, by comparison with the conditions under which its people 
live, indications of those habits and surroundings which are 
inimical to prolonged life in a state of full efficiency, the record 
which is at last to yield that information may be made to serve 
an immediate purpose in the meantime, namely, detection of 
some of those grosser conditions which result in marked or in 
specific disease. If the number and ages of the people living 
within defined areas are known; if the plan of record allow 
smaller areas within those larger ones to be examined in the 
detail of neighbourhoods, of streets, and at last of that ultimate 
unit, the house ; if, while the machinery for ascertaining the 
causes of death with reasonable accuracy is sufficient, the registra- 
tion of deaths under causes be prompt and complete ; lastly, if 
these particulars for every such district be recorded and analysed 
under supervision of a professed sanitarian (who, it seems neces- 
sary to add, must be of medical education), then the information 
becomes immediately available to direct the efforts of sanitary 
authorities, and to concentrate them upon those localities where 
they may be most profitably made. To a full measure of this 
immediate usefulness records of sickness are almost indispensable ; 
for death is but a variable incident of disease, or, in other words, 
current death-rates stand in no constant relation to sickness-rates. 
Registration of sickness, however, has as yet been done nowhere, 
I believe, on the national scale. But the register of illness from 
some diseases is now in a way to be kept universally in England, 
where it has already been kept for several years in many cities ; 
and by the enlightened action taken in this province a year ago, 
the registration of the zymotics is now universal in Victoria. 
Having thus briefly indicated the kind of observation in which 
scientific hygiene has its foundation, three points may be 
distinguished as being of especial importance to us in Australia. 
These are separate record and analysis of the general facts of life 
regarding the native-born population, accurate and speedy informa- 
