of Edinburgh, Session 1869 - 70 . 
39 
and of the length of time of the hospital’s operation (above 100 
years); and that the evidence derivable from them relative to the 
danger of confinement, as regulated by the amount of aggregation, 
or number brought together at the same time, has never been 
properly taken. 
It has been asserted by Dr Evory Kennedy and others, that the 
mortality is in direct proportion to the aggregation. But an 
analysis of the whole data indisputably shows that in the Dublin 
Hospital the mortality does not increase with the increased number 
of the inmates, and does not rise with the aggregation. The mor¬ 
tality of this hospital is neither in the direct nor in the inverse 
ratio of the aggregation. 
The data, indeed, seem to favour the view that the mortality 
diminishes when the aggregation is increased. Certainly a smaller 
proportional number die when there were many in the hospital than 
when there were fewer. 
The following Gentlemen were elected Fellows of the 
Society :— 
St John Vincent Day, Esq., C.E. 
David Munn, Esq. 
Robert R. Tatlock, Esq. 
Monday , 3 d January , 1870. 
Dr CHRISTISON, President, in the Chair. 
The following Communications were read: — 
1. On a Method of Economising our Currency. By 
Andrew Coventry, Esq. 
In the outset, it was stated that the currency consisted mainly 
of a large mass of paper, whose convertibility had been provided 
for by Sir Robert Peel’s Bank Bill of 1844-45, with which paper, 
and the gold set aside for it, the author did not propose to meddle. 
But alongside of the paper there circulated a large quantity of gold, 
and the object of his paper was to economise it. Now, gold having- 
only three uses—as currency, in the arts, and to discharge debts 
abroad—it was desirable that some arrangement should be thought 
