167 
1857-1862 ; the average annual rate of mortality in 142 dis- 
tricts and 56 sub-districts, comprising the chief towns in 
England, was 23‘70 per 1000 living, while in the following 
five years, 1863-1867, it was 2 5 -3 5 ; and in the remaining 
districts and sub-districts of England and Wales, comprising 
small towns and country parishes, it was 19 '74 in the former 
period, and 20‘41 in the latter. Now, as the character of 
the weather is rarely, if ever, the same over the whole of 
England and Wales as that which may happen to prevail in 
the Manchester Water Works district, but will often be 
widely different in some localities, it is evident that the 
whole of the differences between these numbers cannot 
fairly be attributed to meteorological causes alone, and that 
therefore during this period of 11 years the general rate of 
mortality was slowly increasing both in town and country 
districts ; but in a much higher ratio in the former than in 
the latter; and yet it is in the large towns that what are 
supposed to be sanitary improvements have been carried out 
to the greatest extent, and where, therefore, had the schemes 
adopted been based on sound principles, their effect in 
checking the increase in the rate of mortality would have 
been most apparent. 
It will, no doubt, excite surprise in the public mind to find 
that after so many years’ trial, and the expenditure of so 
much public money, the schemes carried out by our sanitary 
authorities have produced absolutely no improvement what- 
ever in the general sanitary condition of the people, nor 
even prevented an increase taking place in the average rate 
of mortality; but, as I have indicated above, our sanitary 
authorities seem never to have made any serious and 
systematic attempt to discover the true causes of the fluc- 
tuations which take place in the rate of mortality, and 
trace out the modes of operation by which their effects are 
produced. Almost all that has been done in this direction 
has been accomplished by private individuals, and I may 
refer, as a noteworthy instance, to a valuable paper in vol. I, 
series HI, of the Society’s Memoirs, by Dr. A. Ransome, 
and Mr. G. Y. Yernon, F.R.A.S., “On the Influence of 
Atmospheric Changes upon Disease.” Sanitary officials, 
however, seem, for the most part, to act as if they were 
