These returns were applied for as affording the only means of arriving at a knowledge of the prevailing classes of diseases among natives and of the relative mortality from each class. Abstracts of the returns, showing the mortality on the admissions for different sexes and ages, and the relative per-centages of mortality from each disease, are appended. (Forms I. to Y.) Of course the results can be relied on only so far as they represent the proportions admitted and dead from each disease, taken on numbers often hardly sufficiently large for statistical purposes. On account of the smallness of these numbers, I consider the results as only approximations, which I give because there is nothing better to be had. The tables do not enable us to ascertain directly the state of health or rate of mortality of the native population; but they afford us in an indirect manner a considerable amount of important information as to the diseases from which natives suffer. The hospital statistics appear to be very much in the same unsatisfactory condition as they are in many of our home hospitals. With these reservations the mortality statistics of these hospitals show a very high death rate upon the numbers treated.
Table L, p. [41].
Thus, in Free Town Hospital, the mortality to admissions among males is upwards of 20 per cent., and among females 18·6 per cent. of the admissions.[†]
[†] The admissions are obtained by adding the deaths to the recoveries, in the absence of more definite information.
Table T, p. [48].
At the Civil Hospital, Port Louis, Mauritius, the mortality is 21·3 per cent. for males, and 38·8 per cent. for females. {10}
Table V, p. [50].
In the Ceylon hospitals it is 20·7 per cent. for males, and 18·1 per cent. for females.
Table P, p. [44].
At Natal the mortality is much lower, being 12·8 per cent. for males and 6·6 per cent. for females.