.

munities, so with us, this disease is more fatal to females than to males. Of the 1,308 deaths, 443 were males and 865 females, the latter number being to the former nearly in the proportion of two to one.

Of the 6,433 deaths from cancer in England in 1858, only 1,969 were males and 4,464 were females, which is somewhat more than two to one. In both sexes, quite a majority of persons dying by cancer are over 45 years of age.

CLASS III. (Local Diseases.) The proportional number of deaths from this class, in different years, fluctuates but little. It ranges from 20 to 21 in each 100 deaths, or a little over one-fifth of the mortality. The class is divided into eight separate groups of diseases. The greatest number of deaths from any one of these groups is that where the Nervous System is more directly involved. That portion of this general class included under the head of Diseases of the Respiratory Organs, follow next in point of numbers of deaths; and Pneumonia or Inflammation of the Lungs, or Lung fever as it is often called is the conceded cause of about four-fifths of the deaths from this group. The number of deaths from diseases of the Organs of Circulation, also those of Digestion was somewhat larger in the year 1859 than in any one of the four anteceding years.

CLASS IV. (Developmental Diseases.) By far the largest number of deaths from assigned causes of this class, are those returned under the unsatisfactory term of "Infantile" and those from Old Age. At these extremes of life, the system is often quite feeble, and from various occult causes the powers of vitality fall too low for recuperation, where no specific disease is sufficiently pronounced to assign a manifest and definite cause of death. A majority of those whose deaths are ascribed to old age invariably is of the female sex; but the males universally predominate in the numbers returned as having died of "Infantile," as well as also of most of the causes of death peculiar to young children. Teething produced an average of 369 deaths in each of the past five years, but the number in 1859 was less than in either of the others.

An annual average of 182-4 women have been reported to have died in giving birth to children in the last five years. The whole

number of registered deaths in Childbirth during the nine years 1851-59, was 1,572. If to these we add (368) the number of reported deaths from Metria (Puerperal fever) it swells the number of deaths from accidents and incidents directly referable to child-bearing, to 1,940 in the last nine years. The number of births registered in the same period was 293,982,-or, deducting plurality cases-288,388 parturitions of living children. Consequently there were 67 deaths recorded from these assigned causes to every 10,000 children born alive, or 66 if we include the number of 5,912 cases of stillborn. In England where the still-births are not taken into the account, there were 51 deaths from these causes to every 10,000 children born alive in the twelve years 1847-58. This proportional number fluctuated during the twelve years, from 61 (in 1848) to 42 (in 1857) deaths of mothers to each 10,000 childbearings. This shows that women are less exempt from fatality in performing the fructiferous function of their existence in Massachusetts than in England.

Old Age is the reported cause of about eleven hundred deaths annually. This is a little over five per cent. of all the deaths from stated causes.

CLASS V. (Violent Deaths.) This class includes fatal casualties of all kinds, Homicides, Suicides, and Executions. Of the former, quite the largest number are reported as accidentally drowned. Many children are reported as killed by burns or scalds, which in too many instances result from carelessness. The number of homicides (18) in 1859 was the same as in the preceding year, and is below the average.

In our last Report we stated that the annual number of suicides reported did not vary much from 90. The number in 1859 was 83, which is but one more than the number in 1858. There has been but one judicial death (in 1858) reported in the past five years, and only four in the whole eighteen years of registration in the State.

i

OCCUPATIONS.

On pages cxiv-cxxi of the tabular portion of this Report, will be found a table exhibiting the numbers, with their aggregate and averages who have been reported as having died during the year 1859 from the various business vocations into which our population is divided. This table presents the facts for the nine eastern counties and the five western counties of the State in separate columns, and in other particulars follows the uniformity of similar tables in the preceding Reports.

By reference to that table it will be observed that the occupations and ages were given in 4,420 instances, of those whose deaths were recorded in the year. Of these 3,195 were registered in the nine eastern counties of the State, and 1,225 in the five western counties. The average age at death, in the former, was little short of 48 years, and that of the latter was 54-5 years. The average age at death of the 56,822 persons who have fallen by death from the various avocations in the State in the last sixteen years and eight months, is fifty years, nine months and eighteen days.

In the aggregate, those who died in the eastern counties show a lower average age than those in the western counties. This is true both in reference to the recorded deaths in 1859, and other preceding years. Had those in the eastern portion of the State enjoyed an average of life as long as that of those in the western section, something over 21,000 years, in the aggregate, would have been added to their earthly existence. The particular

classes which appear by the tabulation, to live a longer average life in the western than in the eastern part of the State, are, Cultivators of the earth,-Active Mechanics abroad,-Inactive Mechanics in shops and Laborers of no special trades; but Active Mechanics in shops, Merchants, Financiers, Capitalists and Factors laboring abroad, exhibit a lower mean age at death in the western than in the eastern part of the Commonwealth. No great value however can be attached to these statements, without a knowledge of some other points not given, such as the numbers

and ages of the living who are pursuing these several callings in

life.

When the United States Census of Massachusetts, taken in 1860, shall have been analyzed, if it is properly done, deductions. may be drawn which will present as much importance as our imperfect registry of deaths can afford.

The Weather. The relation of the meteorological conditions of the seasons to the Public Health is universally acknowledged to be of important consideration. In our late Reports we have given some attention to this point but our facilities have not enabled us to present the matter in so ample a manner as the bearings of climatology upon one of the chief topics of these Reports seem to demand.

At the terminal portion of the tabular part of this Report will be found a statement of some of the points relating to the weather in several localities of the State. The facts there given were kindly furnished, on request, by the individual observers with the single exception of such as relate to the city of Worcester, which were compiled from official reports from the State Hospital in that place.

The annexed statement gives the mean temperature by months, in 1859, and the average of the same in quite a large number of years, at Greenwich, England, and at Boston; also for the year 1859, at Cambridge.

MEAN TEMPERATURE OF THE AIR, at Greenwich, Eng., Boston, Mass. and Cambridge, Mass.-Monthly, Quarterly, Biennial and Annual averages.-Also the amount of Rain collected in England and in Massachusetts.

In England the temperature was 0.9° higher in 1859 than the mean of the last 18 years, and the average of that period was 0.9° higher than the average or mean of the last 88 years. We can assign no satisfactory cause for the manifest increase in tempera-. ture of that region since 1770.

In Boston the mean temperature of 1859 was just the same as that of 1858; but both years show a decrease of about one-half of a degree below the average of 35 years. The mean temperature in the year 1859 was 1.4° higher and in 1858 1.8° higher in Boston than in Cambridge. The mean of the second and third