PRESIDENTS ADDRESS-——SECTION H. 177 
In South Australia alone is a medical certificate of the cause of death 
required by law in cases in which a medical man has been in attendance. 
Elsewhere deputy or district registrars are instructed to enquire for the 
name of the medical attendant, and, if possible, to get a certificate from 
him; in some cases.the form of register prescribed in schedules to the 
Act includes a column for this entry, in others it is required by regula- 
tions made by the Registrar-General ; but when no medical man was in 
attendance, any person qualified or required to give information touching 
a death may assign a cause to it, and the Registrar is nowhere forbidden 
to enter causes so assigned. In the second place, the official nosology of 
the Royal College of Physicians was in one province used for the com- 
_ pilation of a list to assist district registrars in their duty, and there 
were included in it directions for dealing with causes of death which 
might be assigned in popular terms. The following are a few of these, 
taken almost at random :—‘‘ Cauliflower” is to be recorded under 
Order VI., Class 8, 2 ; ‘‘cold, a vague term; was it bronchitis ? pneumonia ? 
influenza ? if undefined, Order I., Class 1, 8;” “ collapse—what was the 
cause? class accordingly ” (in these two instances it seems that the 
District-Registrar, who has not seen the case, and who would not be 
much the wiser if he had, is to ascertain and classify the cause of death, 
after consultation with other unqualified persons); “ constriction of the 
brain—bad ; Order VI., Class 1, 13;” “yellow fever (remittent fever), 
Order I., Class 1, 15;” ‘shivering fit (ague ?) vague; Order I., Class 3, 
2.’ This list was adopted in other provinces after its appearance in the 
first. It therefore seems to have supplied a want, and to have served a 
purpose. Thirdly, Registrars-General, under the older classification, 
returned deaths from unspecified causes in the proportion of about less 
than one per cent. to total deaths; and under the newer classification in 
the proportion of from about 8 to 10 per cent. to total deaths (the 
proportions, perhaps, having been nearly the same all along, but being 
now more easily seen.) Finally, since “certified” and “uncertified ” 
deaths are in no province discriminated in the abstracts (nor, I believe, 
in the registers), there are no means of judging (unless the list quoted 
be taken to supply them) whether the 8 or 10 per cent. mentioned really 
include all the deaths which should, in a reasonably accurate sense, be 
returned as due to unspecified causes. 
In South Australia a medical certificate of the cause of death is not 
only required in cases on which a medical man has been in attendance, 
but the latter is compelled by law to furnish it. That the cause of death 
should be ascertained in every case (as far as possible) by competent 
observers is, of course, essential; but a law under which a class of the 
people is compelled to render skilled or professional service to the rest 
gratuitously, and under penalties for failure, is obviously and grossly 
unjust. The Government of South Australia, on the one hand, neglects 
to oblige its paid officers (the coroners), who are especially appointed by 
it to ascertain the cause of death in doubtful or suspicious cases, to desist 
from returning such futile verdicts as “death from natural causes ;’ 
and on the other, goes out of its way to enforce under penalties return 
of the cause of death in cases to which no sort of suspicion attaches by 
members of one class of the people governed to whom it stands in no 
special relation whatever. The violation of liberty thus described is of 
infinitely greater moment than the injury inflicted on the particular 
class that in this case happens to suffer, and should be found of very 
general interest, as it is of general, and of the highest, importance. 
Annual rough enumeration of the people living within defined 
areas of comparatively small size (which should be, of course, 
merely subdivisions of larger defined districts), with registration 
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