352 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. [Sess. 
XXII. — The Sex and Age Incidence of Mortality from Pulmonary 
Tuberculosis in Scotland and in its Groups of Registration 
Districts since 1861. By 0. Hunter Stewart, M.B., D.Sc., 
Professor of Public Health, University of Edinburgh. (With Six- 
teen Tables, nine of which in text, and Eight Plates.) 
(MS. received June 23, 1910. Read November 21, 1910.) 
No subject in the domain of preventive medicine is attracting greater 
attention at present than that of the prevention of tuberculosis, more 
especially that of tuberculosis of the lungs. The fact that this disease is 
one of the largest contributors to the death-rate makes the question 
pressing, and the great diminution of the mortality from it that has 
already taken place in most civilised countries makes the prospect of still 
greater diminution most hopeful. 
The statistics of the mortality from this disease in England and Wales 
contained in the Annual Report of the Registrar General have been 
carefully investigated by Dr Tatham, late Superintendent of Statistics, and 
the results obtained have been tabulated and discussed in his Supplements 
to the 55th and 65th Reports of the Registrar General for England and 
Wales, etc. These results are of great epidemiological value, showing as 
they do, not only the course of the mortality and its sex and age incidence, 
but also the effect of locality, urban and rural, on this mortality. 
In the following paper the results are given of an investigation on 
somewhat similar lines of the statistics of the mortality from tuberculosis 
of the lungs in Scotland during the period 1861-1907. The yearly 
deaths and the estimated population for that year are taken from the 
Annual Reports of the Registrar General for Scotland. The death-rates 
are per 10,000 living, and are calculated on the mean estimated population. 
The sex and age constitution of the population, i.e. the number of each 
sex at each of the age periods 0-5 years, etc., is calculated in each case from 
that of the census at the beginning of the corresponding decade. 
Table I. shows the course of the mortality from tuberculosis of the 
lungs in Scotland since 1861, and, for purposes of comparison, that in 
England and Wales during the same period and in Ireland since 1881, the 
rates for the latter being calculated from the statistics contained in the 
Annual Reports of the Registrar General for Ireland. In columns 2, 3, and 
4 are given the rates which actually occurred in Scotland in the respective 
