This table demonstrates, therefore, in a most marked manner, the action of modern civilisation and of preventive medicine, which, by removing the microbe and diminishing the dangers of child-rearing, has diminished the rate of mortality to a very notable extent in the early years of life. The increase in the number of deaths from constitutional diseases, occurring as they do in middle or advanced age, are probably due to the survival of an increased number of individuals into the period of maturity. From this table it is difficult to say whether or no these individuals are below the mean average type. We have to die at one period of life or at another, and if men and women are preserved from the dangers of childhood and youth, there will be more to fall victims to the lung and chest complaints of more advanced life. But it is possible by other sets of figures, obtainable from the Registrar General’s reports, to arrive at some sort of decision as to the healthiness of the middle-aged and elderly people living to-day, and to compare these results with similar ones drawn from the statistics of twenty or thirty years ago. _Death-rate for Advanced Years on the Increase._ In table 13 (Report of the Registrar General for 1891) the death-rates per 1,000 are given for different age periods, and these results date from 1841 to 1890, and are arranged in groups of ten years. The table was prepared in the following way. At each period given, say from 1841–50, the number of persons living at a certain age was calculated from the census returns. The numbers dying at that age being known, these are given in the table per 1,000 persons of that age. In order to reduce the number of figures, I have shown the death-rates of two groups only, the first group of persons (males) younger, and the second group of persons older than 35 years. DEATH-RATE OF MALES PER 1000 LIVING. ------------------------------------- GROUP I. GROUP II. 0–35 years. 35 and upwards. ------------------------------------- 1841–50 112·0 591·0 1851–60 111·2 581·9 1861–70 110·8 595·1 1871–80 101·0 616·7 1881–90 87·8 589·3 ------------------------------------- Group I. shows the very steady diminution in the death-rate of the earlier years of life, and similar results are also brought out by a corresponding table showing the death-rates among females.