PROCEEDINGS, MAY. xxiii 



of health seemed to be ander the impression that he (Mr. Johnston) 

 differed from him on that point, and yet he had devoted more space 

 to extolling the value of human effort in mitigating disease than most 

 other causes except one. Tn his paper he had said : — "Let me not 

 be understood, however, to assert the valuelessness of human effort by 

 ascribing the periodical death-rate, rise, and fall, mainly to far reach- 

 ing superterrestrial causes, among which the sun's varying energy 

 plays a large part. On the contrary, I desire to affirm that human effort, 

 directed to selection of sites for dwellings ; supplies of pure food and 

 water ; to provision against poisonous food and drinks ; to improve- 

 ments in sanitary matters, and to facilities for healthful recreation ; 

 to improvements in workshops and factories ; to the multiplication of 

 acknowledged health safeguards and of convenient centres for the pro- 

 per treatment of disease, as well as to improvements in treatments of 

 injuries and diseases. In all such matter human effort does mu.ch, 

 and can do more, to mitigate the intensities of attacks of disease, from 

 whatever source they come, even if it cannot wholly subdue them. That 

 sanitation and improved treatment has done much in England during 

 the last 20 years to lower the death-rate of the younger lives cannot 

 be reasonably doubted, and this of itself should encourage local effort 

 to strive for further improvement." He had been entirely misunder- 

 stood by those who assumed that he under-valued human effort. In- 

 deed, there had been some preconceptions wibh regard to the paper 

 which were not entirely justified. At the same time he was thank- 

 ful for the generous way in which the paper had been criticised, for it 

 was necessarily open to many misconceptions, and some errors on 

 the part of the statistician would naturally creep in. He agreed 

 that greater information should be given in their public registers for 

 localising any kind of infectious disease, so as to control it as far as 

 they could. With respect to this efforts had been made by the registrar 

 and by the Government, and he had no doubt the Government would 

 take measures to give the registrar power to get information as to 

 locality. At the present time the registrar could not compel any 

 person to give more information than was now recorded, which was 

 all that could be demanded under the Act. He quite sympathised 

 with those who wished to see the limits of age separating the old 

 age group from the younger, raised from 60 to 65. But the reason he 

 adopted 60 was that in examining statistics for other countries it was 

 one of the limits that could be generally found. Those who had to toil 

 through immense masses of figures would know the difference it made 

 in the labour to adopt a figure v/hich was easily and generally acces- 

 sible. Besides, his researches had satisfied him that the advancing of 

 the age to 65 would make no material difference in the result as 

 regards Tasmania. To eliminate the ages under five in a general health 

 standard as suggested by Dr. Parkinson and others would not be a 

 wise course, as this group affords the most sensitive index to local 

 health conditions. Besides it would be unfair to such a colony as New 

 Zealand, where deaths under 5 are relati\'ely very few ; while the 

 reasons advanced for excluding the group, owing to the small variation 

 in proportion living in different colonies, are not of much force. Mr. 

 Johnston further pointed out that the general health standard was only 

 supplementary to the indices for each specific age group given 

 separately in page 21 of his paper, and he showed that for age group 

 5-60 Tasmania stood first of all the colonies, New Zealand not 

 excepted ; thus the deaths 5-60 per each 1,000 living are — Tasmania, 5'60; 

 South Australia, 5-67; New Zealand, 6-17; New South Wales, 7-37; 

 Victoria, 7"72; Queensland, 12-66. He did not agree with those who would 

 not allow Tasmania credit for her climatic conditions in their effect upon 

 death-rate. Nature had done a great deal for this country, and it 



