Abstract
THE seventeenth annual report of the Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Health, which was published on December 4, covers the year 1935. The deaths numbered 477,401, an increase of 591 over 1934, the principal certified causes of death at all ages being, in order, (1) diseases of the heart and circulatory system, (2) cancer, (3) bronchitis, pneumonia and other respiratory diseases. Attention is directed to the changing age-distribution of the population. Since the beginning of the century, the proportion of persons under twenty-five years has fallen by nearly twenty-five per cent, due to the fall in the birth-rate, and the fall in the general death-rate, which increases the proportion in the older groups. This increasing longevity of the population, together with more accurate diagnosis, probably accounts for the increase of the number of deaths from cancer, which is a disease of the later ages, from 63,263 in 1934 to 64,507 in 1935, and it is probably fallacious to assume that there is a real increase of cancer. For 1935, the incidence of scarlet fever, diphtheria, tuberculosis, venereal and rheumatic diseases has declined, and only one case of smallpox was notified. Attention is directed to the relation of food to health and disease, and to the extension of the maternity and child welfare services.
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The Nation's Health in 1935. Nature 139, 21 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/139021b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/139021b0