At King William’s Town Hospital, Kaffraria, the mortality from tubercular diseases, for men and women {12} conjointly, was no less than 70·6 per cent. of the total deaths, and from chest diseases 11·7 per cent.
Table Y.
Both classes of disease afford a high death rate in the Canadian hospitals. For the tubercular forms this amounts to 44·9 per cent. for men, and 41·3 per cent. for women. The other chest diseases give rise to 30·6 per cent. of the total hospital mortality for men, and 24·4 per cent. for women. Three-fourths of the whole hospital mortality among men, and two-thirds among women, were thus due to some form or other of chest disease.
Much has been said and written on the pernicious effects of the use of intoxicating liquors by uncivilized races. Diseases of the brain and nervous system, and liver diseases, are those which, at home, are generally supposed to indicate the greater or less prevalence of habits of intoxication among the people. Let us inquire to what extent admissions and deaths from these classes prevail in the various colonies.
Table M.
At Sierra Leone brain and nervous diseases occasion 5·7 per cent. of the total admissions, and 12·7 per cent. of the total deaths among men, and 9·2 per cent. of the admissions, with 21·6 per cent. of the deaths, among women. Liver diseases afford only 0·1 per cent. of the admissions, and no deaths.
Table K.
Cape Coast Hospital affords an extraordinary contrast to this, for there we find that, although brain and nervous diseases and liver diseases occasion no more than 4·8 per cent., and 2·4 per cent., respectively, of the admissions, all the deaths arose from them.
Table Q.
The Natal hospitals show a proportion of admissions from brain and nervous diseases, of 5·7 per cent. of men, and 8·3 per cent. of women. But no deaths and no admissions from liver disease.