add to the wear and tear of human life. Such diseases increase out of their due proportion, and many fall victims to long paralysis or to death sooner than would occur in the quiet walks of life. Caution and precaution, due self-control and skilled advice would postpone for many a too early breaking down of nerve and mental forces. Digestive and Intestinal Disease. When it is remembered that this column includes no one under twenty years of age in our enumeration, the deaths of 4,789 in five years from these causes (2,455 being in cities), or of 1,075 the last year (607 being in cities), shows that large numbers succumb to errors in diet, such as are not sudden in their results. Very many formed and endowed for a life of seventy years, have their days shortened by errors which finally wear out the powers of digestion. Rules as to good food, exercise and the management and self-control of the appetite deserve to be carefully studied by all who would ward off the later failures of life-power. With such the power to secure and use up the right food after the middle period of life is the determining consideration as to whether the life can be prolonged to old age. Cancer. For five years previous our returns record 2,115 deaths, of which 1,127 were in cities. For the past year there were 484 deaths, of which 288 were in the larger cities. It is a disease which as to its causes and pathology is having close study, but which as yet fails to be reached by preventive methods. A review of these causes of death furnishes us with many indications as to preventable disease, and the proper care of population. When it is remembered that careful statistics based on life insurance and other facts as to disease, have shown that for every death there are on an average two persons sick the year round, or as Lyon Playfair calculates it, there are for every unnecessary death twenty-eight cases of unnecessary sickness, we cannot but come to some realization of what a tax on happiness, on industrial energy, and on all life, avoidable deaths and avoidable sickness are, and redouble our energies to restrain the wastes of avoidable disease, to remove its burdens, and so add to human health and happiness. TABLE OF CONTENTS. REPORT OF THE STATE BOARD OF HEALTH. PAGE. I. Report of the Secretary of the Board.... II. Tenement Houses, by E. H. Janes, M. D......... 53-63 VIII. Report of the Committee of Public Analysts on Milk, Butter, Canned Fruits, Kerosene, &c., by TABLE OF CONTENTS. REPORT OF THE BUREAU OF VITAL STATISTICS. PAGE. II. Quinquennial Tables, and Remarks thereupon....... 287-300 IV. Condensed Comparative Table of Death-Rates, and Dysentery Effluvium Nuisances.... Erysipelas.... Eyes and Ears................ Factories and Workshops.. Fevers..... Fever, Remittent......... Fever, Typhoid.. Filtration..... Gross, O. B., M.D.. Hard Water.... Health Boards.. Health Resorts... Heart Diseases.. Hoose in Cattle... House Waste... Jails........ Janes, E. H. Kerosene Laws and Decisions..... Leeds, Prof. A. R...... PAGE. 336 18 336 241 15 108 359 361 .67, 83, 89 109 84 .36, 109, 239 99 369 255 11 23 24, 163 53 ...193, 213–217 .41, 49, 262, 284 187 |