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that phthisical patients out here not only do not live longer 

 than they do there — they do not live so long. Now, here we 

 require to be careful in the use of words, so as not to mislead 

 or to be misled. We ought, perhaps, to say " they do not live 

 to be so old," because the matter involved really is the 

 duration of life, and not the duration of disease. Those who 

 die out here of phthisis do not live to be so old as those who 

 die of consumption at home. This is due, evidently, to one or 

 two circumstances. Either with the same average age at 

 which people are attacked the disease is more rapid and hills 

 sooner out here, and so the duration of the disease and hence 

 of life is less, or else with the same malignity of disease the 

 people who are attacked out here are younger. "Which of the 

 two is it ? As to the average duration of the disease, we can 

 learn nothing from, our statistics. The popular impression 

 and that of the faculty is that people with this disease at least 

 prolong their days by leaving England, taking a voyage to 

 Australia, and remaining here. But if their life is really 

 extended and they eventually succumb, then the mean duration 

 of life here ought to be greater than in England, where they 

 would have died by so much the sooner as their days have 

 been prolonged by the change. But our mean duration is 

 actually less ; therefore, either life is not lengthened in those 

 who come out with the disease, or their prolongation of life is 

 more than counterbalanced by the other early deaths out here. 

 So we have to come back to the disease as it begins in South 

 Australia, and face this difficulty " that people die of con- 

 sumption at an earlier age here than in England " — a difficulty 

 increased by the probability founded on popular and medical 

 belief that people who come Lere with the disease have their 

 life prolonged. Either the people attacked out here are 

 younger than in England, or else the disease is more rapid 

 and malignant. Whether the disease is more rapid or not, 

 our statistics cannot inform us. This the doctors must tell us 

 from a reduction of their private notes. Does it attack the 

 people at an earlier age ? Our tables show only the age at 

 death, and not at the commencement of the disease. May it 

 be that the disease does not attack the people at an earlier age 

 than in England, but that the people to be attacked are not so 

 old in South Australia. This would explain the difficulty. 

 Eor if our population consisted mostly of young people, and 

 the English of much older persons, even though the disease 

 attacked the people living of the same ages in an equal degree 

 there and here, and the duration of the affection were the 

 same in the two instances, yet the mean age of death would, 

 of course, be less in South Australia than in England. If we 

 take the census of 1876 as a basis we find our average age to 



