M 56
Excluding cases of deaths from violence and sudden deaths, the bodies examined at the public mortuaries are those of persons who have not been under the care of qualified medical men.
These are mostly from the poorest people living under the least favourable conditions of domestic sanitation.
Yet the water supply, as delivered, is of the same quality for all.
The comparatively high figure for Typhoid cases notified from the mortuaries during 1923 lends support to the supposition that the incidence of the disease was mostly determined by domestic factors.
On the other hand, the higher figures in 1924 for those cases notified by private medical practitioners and from hospitals suggests that a more favoured class suffered more in this year.
Owing to errors in the census and the continual fluctuation in the population, no accurate estimate can be made of the distribution of the population according to age and sex.
Comparatively few births are registered, but probably a greater proportion of male than female births.
It has, however, been estimated that the Chinese female population may be taken as approximately equal to one-third of the total Chinese population.
The following table shows the number of cases of Typhoid and Paratyphoid Fevers for the years 1923 and 1924, classed according to sex and age over and under 10 years.
The two years show noteworthy differences both in age and sex distribution.
Year 1923 1924 Males Females Males Females Under 10 years 36 8 44 11 Over 10 years 88 47 96 48In 1923, the female cases were 46.9 per cent. of the total cases, while in 1924 they were 36.07 per cent.
While the difference in sex distribution of the population is due to the fact that it consists chiefly of adult males who are labourers, the children being more equally divided between the two sexes, there is probably a slight preponderance of male