174 PRESIDENTS ADDRESS—SECTION H. 
not, therefore, be pitching the standard of health too high to 
assert than any excess of mortality in English districts over 17 
annual deaths per 1000 living is an excess not due to the mortality 
incident to human nature, but to foreign causes to be repelled, 
and by hygienic expedients conquered.” There is a wide 
difference, it will be noted, between Dr. Farr’s cautious, 
conditional statement, and the nett, positive terms of the quotation 
I first made. But the point to which I now direct attention with 
reference to the search for a health-standard for this country is 
that Dr. Farr is careful to limit the application of his generalisa- 
tion to England, to the observed facts of life among that particular 
population living under the particular conditions presented by 
that country. And, in fact, all health-standards must be drawn 
from the very countries within which they are to be set up, unless 
‘the comparisons made with them are to be delusive, misleading, 
and obstructive to true progress. 
In giving that example, I have shown that its logical conclusion 
is a reductio ad absurdum. But a defence might be set up— 
it might be said that want of correction for age explains the 
alleged phenomenon. That would be sound as far as it goes, 
although, of course, it would be destructive to the comparison 
instituted. It is, however, far from being the only correction 
needed, as may be easily shown from another part of the work, 
where it is made, or rather allowed for. Mr. Hayter there uses 
Mr. Sargent’s plan for eliminating the disturbing influence which 
inequality in age-distribution has over such comparisons between 
two different countries or cities. This consists in finding the 
death-rates in the two places at the usual age-groups, and in 
ascertaining the absolute number of deaths they would afford in 
each place upon the supposition that an equal number of persons 
were living in each at each age-period ; and then in striking a 
rate upon each total hypothetical population with the two 
absolute numbers of deaths. Mr. Sargent called this a method 
-of ascertaining the specific mortality—Mr. Hayter prefers to call 
it the ‘adjusted death-rate.” Its use appears to be in places 
where the ages of the people are vow, to save the trouble of 
redistributing one of the populations under ages to agree with 
the other. Mr. Hayter compares in this manner the mortality 
at age-groups (calculated mainly upon estimated numbers living 
at ages) in Victoria with that in England; and the result is still 
vastly in favour of the former. The general reader will, then, 
get from this comparison confirmation of the opinion to which 
the first led him—that there is in reality very little for sanitation 
to do in his province. But what is the fact? It is that the 
comparison is false. It is instituted between places which are 
quite different in general respects, as I have already pointed out ; 
but they are different in the following particulars especially, 
which alone are fatal to the supposed parallel :—Victoria is a 
