744 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION I. 
neglected children. If these are deducted, we have a mor- 
tality of -2 per 1000. That is to say, that during the year 
1900, of the 117,000 people living in the country districts of 
Tasmania, only 2:75 per 1000 died between the ages of 1 - 
and 65, and, excluding accidents, &c., only ‘2 per 1000 
hetween these ages. Again, if we take consumptive diseases 
as a test of the health of a country, we get something like 
the following :—In England, last year, something like 2 per 
1000 died of phthisis or consumption, and many more from 
obscure consumptive diseases of a tubercular origin. In 
these country districts of Tasmania, from every form of 
tuberculosis, there were registered 53 deaths, or 1 in 2000, 
which is one-quarter the English death-rate from tubercular 
diseases. But many cases of consumption come here from 
other countries, which will account for some of the above 
deaths. Then the five mining towns are of recent growth, 
and their sanitary surroundings are by no means what they 
should be. When one looks at the little dark huts in which 
a great number of our settlers live, it 1s extraordinary that 
the death-rate amongst them is so wonderfully low, and 
amply proves my contention that sunny skies give long lives, 
as most of these settlers only stay in their houses a few 
hours out of the 24, most of their time being spent in the 
sun and fresli air. My first scene in the opening of this 
lecture was primeval man, bowing down to the sun in 
worship, and praying it to give him health. In voicing the 
trend of modern science, I, too, as a sanitarian, would call 
upon you to accept the sun as the great health-giver of to- 
day. God, our Heavenly Father, demands our profoundest 
spirit-worship ; but when He filled the world with light, and 
sent the sunshine in such rich abundance, and placed light” 
in such a prominent position in the Bible, He intended us 
to recognise it as His great gift to the world; and, if we do 
not so accept it, and so use it, we have no right to complain 
of His treatment when we, or our children, grow sick and 
die—which we assuredly shall do if we break Nature’s laws. 
