xxxvi Appendix, 



•I 



to wed a child of 16, with the inevitable result of begetting a progeny rickety, 

 scrofulous, and (to use the indigenous phrase) hastily run up. Asiatic cholera 

 has already numbered one victim, and New York trembles to think what 

 ravages that pestilence will make when it fairly warms to its work." 



From another medical journal, published in Philadelphia, I extract the 

 following paragraph : — 



"The harvest of death. The protracted and unprecedented heat of the 

 first and second weeks of July were accompanied by a mortality in this city of 

 a most startling character. The whole number of deaths for the week ending 

 6th July was 764, an increase of 350 over the week previous. Of these 274 

 were from cholera infantum. High as these figures are, they were exceeded 

 by those of the following week, when they reached 852 ; of this number 497 

 were children under two years of age, and 383 under one year. Of cholera 

 infantum there were reported 310 cases, and of sunstroke 68." 



Recollecting that we had passed through a summer hotter than usual, I 

 determined to compare the mortality among children under two years of age 

 during that season with the mortality during the previous summer, and 

 during other periods of the year. 



I examined in the Registration Office for the Dunedin district the records 

 of all deaths among children under two years of age during the period of the 

 two years, from 1st July, 1870, to 30th June, 1872. During that time 232 

 deaths took place. I divided the causes of death into three classes : deaths 

 from affections of the brain, deaths from affections of the respiratory organs, 

 and deaths from intestinal affections. Of the 232 deaths, eight occurred in 

 children that had not reached the age of one week, and the circumstances of 

 their birth had probably more to do with their death than any external cause 

 acting upon them ; thirty-three died from affections of the brain, fifty-eight 

 from affections of the respiratory organs, 103 from intestinal disorders, twenty- 

 six deaths were recorded as having occurred from debility or atrophy, two 

 from tubercular disease, without specifying the locus of that disease, one from 

 jaundice, and one from heart-disease. It is to be regretted that the causes of 

 so many deaths are recorded in such an indefinite manner, it takes somewhat 

 from the little value that statistics have, when twenty-six deaths are set down 

 as having occurred from debility or weakness, without specifying the cause of 

 that weakness, or what organs were especially affected. 



On examining the periods of the year during which the deaths occurred 

 from these three classes of disease. I found that there was no particular time 

 during which deaths from brain affections were especially prevalent. The 

 summer heat is not intense enough here to produce sunstroke, with ordinary 

 precautions ; at least that disease is not of frequent occurrence, and no deaths 

 among infants are attributed to it. The thirty-three deaths that occurred 



