PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS—-SECTION H. 183 
For this purpose of preventing diseases—and especially for 
preventing those which prevail in special localities, whose spread 
is in the main due to local faults—the facts regarding death are 
useless when they are returned only for areas of large extent. 
We sometimes see, to take an extreme instance, death-rates from 
one or other cause of disease carefully struck upon the population 
of whole provinces, and compared together. We see comparisons 
drawn between the number of deaths from typhoid or from 
phthisis, for example, in different provinces, a rate being struck 
with the total estimated populations; and the results show that as 
regards them, Queensland heads the list. Of course such a 
comparison, if used as an indication of sanitary condition (and I 
do not see any other object in making it), is false for several 
reasons : as because typhoid fever is practically a disease of the first 
three /ustra of adult life, and because new-comers to a neighbour- 
hood or a country are its especial victims, while Queensland has 
for long received a steady stream of youthful immigrants, whose 
deaths (in such comparisons) are not distinguished from those of 
the residents ; and similarly with phthisis.* But suppose such 
BIRTHPLACE OF DECEASED. 1884. | 1885. isss. | 1887. 
- Queensland re &: a Boe ieee, Bor 4) canto 
| 
Total Australia, Tasmania or ) a ae) a 
New Zealand... ae 5 ah 65 sated alee 
India and China... a Ro 15 13 LON Le | 
Polynesia ... aS atk A BE 27 188 | 159 
Other Countries ... Aes is: 236 | 234 244 | 220 
Unspecified age sae aed Seen PaO) fee | 3 
Total ae 5c oe 572 | 593 494, 441 
comparisons were fair: considering that typhoid is a disease of 
locality, of what practical use is a statement which represents it as 
prevalent among 367,000 persons, occupying 700,000 square miles 
of territory? Does it afford any other information at all than that 
typhoid is there? Clearly not. But let another course be taken. 
Let the locality of the deaths be known, and they would be seen 
to occur in urban districts chiefly ; then in particular neighbour- 
hoods of those districts; lastly in particular streets, and even 
especially in particular houses in those streets ; and, armed with 
this local knowledge, the sanitary authority could ascertain the 
local cause, and fulfil the sole object of its creation by removing 
it. And the case is not far different when rates are returned 
* The Registrar-General for Queensland records the birthplace of all decedents from 
phthisis, and with the following instructive results. 
