Abstract
ACCORDING to the quarterly return of the Registrar-General of Scotland, 1942 was a very healthy year, as is shown by the fact that the death-rate from all causes was 13.0 per 1,000 of the population, or 1.5 below the corresponding rate for 1941 and 0.7 below the average for the quinquennium 1936-41. The birth-rate was 18.1 per 1,000, or 0.2 above the average for 1941 and 0.5 above the five-year period. Both infantile mortality and maternal mortality showed very satisfactory rates, the former being 69 per 1,000 live births and the latter 4.0 per 1,000 total births, which was the lowest rate on record for about four decades. The deaths from the principal epidemic diseases were the lowest on record, amounting to 1,060. As regards the chief chronic diseases with a high mortality, the death-rate from all forms of tuberculosis was 80 per 100,000. Though there was a decline in non-respiratory tuberculosis, especially in the age-group fifteen to twenty-five, there was a definite rise in the respiratory tuberculosis death-rate. Increase in the death-rate for syphilis was shown mainly by an increase in aneurysm and congenital syphilis. The death-rate from malignant disease was 171 per 100,000, which represented an increase above the 1941 rate. On the other hand, there was a definite decline in the death-rate for cardiac and respiratory diseases apart from tuberculosis arid malignant disease.
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Vital Statistics of Scotland. Nature 152, 243 (1943). https://doi.org/10.1038/152243a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/152243a0