Public Health And Vital Statistics, 1909: India
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Extracted from:
THE IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF INDIA
THE INDIAN EMPIRE
HENRY FROWDE, M.A.
PUBLISHED UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF HIS MAJESTY'S SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA IN COUNCIL
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1909
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
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Condition in india as affecting the individual
THE general state of the public health in every country depends on the measure of adjustment of the relations of the f individual and the race to the environment : the more complete and con- tinuous the adjustment, the greater the longevity. The tendency of European civilization is to give man more and more com- plete control of his surroundings, whereas in India these are actually and relatively stronger, more capricious and unreliable, than in the West, while the individual is less resistant and adaptable. These influences have moulded the moral and physical character of the people and their civilization ; and a brief reference to some of the salient features of the situation will tend to elucidate the vital statistics, as well as to explain some of the peculiar difficulties of the problems they disclose.
Conditions regards the individual, the main general results of the in India as affection marriage customs are those to be expected from the absence of the indi- free selection and from endogamous restriction : viz. increase Ower o f transmitting characteristics (' prepotency '), adeterioration of physique l , lessened resistance to disease, and,
Early marriage
Early marriage possibly, some relative impairment of fertility. The almost . un j versa i custom of marriage at puberty implies that practically all the immature adolescents of every generation have an equal opportunity of propagating their kind ; and there is none of the salutary elimination effected in the West by the celibacy of large classes. The general average product must be lower ; and apart from the greater tendency to disease, inherited and acquired, the duration of life is affected in another way. For there is probably a direct relation between early marriage and 1 The result of 29,000 observations on healthy prisoners in Bengal showed that 60 per cent, were between 5' a" and 5' 4" in height ; 13 per cent, were below 5' a", and only 07 per cent, above 5' 8". The average weight of the healthy Bengali peasant was shown to be 109 Ib. (7 stone n lt>.). In Bombay the physical standard is even lower. (Buchanan, Indian Medical Gazette, October, 1897.)
the duration of the reproductive functions, and the premature strain on the latter tends to their earlier cessation. The climacteric is advanced, with all the corresponding results of earlier degeneration, and we thus obtain a more rapid vital cycle involving premature senility. As regards the individual, as will be seen later on, an enormous sacrifice is also incurred in the loss of maternal and infant life. On the other hand, the rapid succession of the generations, probably five or more in a century, is favourable to the process of adjustment to an environment that is subject to constant changes : we may see the results in the rapid recuperation of the people after famine and epidemics, and possibly in the relative immunity they possess to some of the chief causes of mortality.
Defective nutrition
With respect to nutrition, it cannot be doubted that the quality and nature of the food of the majority leaves much to be desired, and on this the measure of vital resistance largely depends, while the quantity available appears to influence the birth-rate in a marked degree. These combined effects are strongly emphasized in times of scarcity and famine, with con- sequent radical modification in the number, the vitality, and the age constitution of the population. Under ordinary con- ditions, the essential proteid (nitrogenous) element available is largely diminished by waste in all vegetable food, and primitive methods of cooking and digestive debility add to the loss. These disabilities are greatly enhanced in sickness, when bulky, dry, and ill-cooked food cannot be taken, and this is a factor in the heavy mortality and the economic loss from prostra- tion. Finally, poverty, of which sickness and mortality are perhaps the chief causes, has a direct effect on the resources in food, clothing, and housing, and on the standard of comfort, and so of * resistance/ while it affects detrimentally the power to achieve measures of amelioration.
The social environment ,influence of rainfall
Coming now to the general environment, its special characteristics may be briefly indicated under three heads : religious custom and moral, social, and physical. The whole tone of religious fl uen ce of thought, with its philosophy of fatalism, is against the indivi- religion dualistic self-assertion necessary to success in the struggle for existence ; it is opposed to co-operation for civic ideals ; and it promotes indifference to life. Evidence of this is seen in the now suppressed practices of the sacrifice of widows (satt) and female infanticide, and in the treatment of women in child-bed. Disastrous effects on a larger scale frequently follow on the congregation of vast numbers at places of pilgrimage, where the rites involve overcrowding, exposure, and the consumption of unwholesome, if sacred, food and water. The duties of daily life, limited in their application to the individual and the family, are ordered and performed as religious rites which the British Government is pledged to respect as long as they do not outrage the moral law ; and herein lies one difficulty in securing the observance of the sanitary ordinances which have occupied so large a place in the Statute Book of recent years. The caste constitution of society, if justified in the circum- stances of its origin and in many of its results, imposes a rigid bar to free competition and to the development of civilization. Again, many of the conditions of social life are largely the result of the anarchy and insecurity of life and^ property that prevailed anterior to British rule. This, with the climate and the water-supply, has determined the insanitary structure of the dwellings and their arrangement in aggregates, while the seclusion of women of the better classes has also had evil effects on the race of the natural leaders of the people. There has been little, if any, adjustment to the new conditions which are the outcome of the pax Britannica, while the most important of these conditions, operating on the cumulative effects of religion and custom, has resulted in an enormous increase of population. This has led to extraordinary density over great areas, and to overcrowding, to which the development of in- dustrial enterprise has greatly contributed in many large centres, while it must be remembered that an overwhelming proportion of the sickness and mortality is caused by specific communicable diseases.
The physical environment .influence of rainfall
Of the predominant features of the physical environment much might be said, but the following remarks must be conInfluence of fined to brief suggestions of the influence of rainfall and range rainfall. o f temperature. Nine-tenths of the vast population live from the land ; and the two indispensable conditions of existence, the supply of food and water, depend almost entirely, in the greater part of India, upon the character of the summer monsoon, i.e. upon the rainfall that occurs during some three or four months, which is then stored in, and on, the soil for con- sumption during the rest of the year. Speaking generally, the country is subject annually to a short period of deluge and a longer one of dryness, but there are the greatest contrasts in the relative intensity of the phenomena in different areas under normal conditions. These, moreover, give place, from time to time, to periods of excess or failure of the rains, with consequent accentuation of the phenomena in proportion to their duration and the area affected. Now, the sources of water-supply are of three kinds, surface * tanks ' (ponds), shallow wells, and rivers \ while everywhere, save in a few of the largest towns, all sewage and liquid and solid waste are committed to the soil for dis- posal, either by deposit on the surface or by burial, and this generally in close proximity to the inhabited site. The effect of heavy and continuous rain, which is far less penetrating in proportion to its quantity than outside the tropics, is to wash the accumulated soil impurities into the water-sources and to leave stagnant collections of water where drainage is defective. The ground-water, replenished by percolation often too rapid for effective filtration, rises quickly in the wells, until in a few weeks, over large areas, it is within a few feet of the surface which it frequently reaches by the end of the monsoon. In this way the majority of the wells of the inhabited sites are rendered saline and non-potable by infiltration of sewage salts. Meanwhile, all the conditions of life have been transformed : water is abundant, but certainly at first impure ; coarse green vegetables largely replace the simple grain diet ; there are frequent sudden alterations in temperature, against which the clothing resources are inadequate, and the people are driven to the shelter of their dwellings ; the cultivation of rice, the staple food-crop of large areas, necessitates interference with the natural drainage ; and lastly, there is a great development of insect and micro-organic life. Here we have all the conditions that lead to bowel complaints and fevers ; and the mortality curve, which is generally lowest in June, rises, with the mon- soon period, to its highest point in the two succeeding months. Thereafter, through the next six months, the course of events is reversed : the water-supplies and surface collections are gradually depleted ; and as the hot season advances many are completely exhausted, most of those that persist being reduced to the condition of muddy puddles in the case of wells and tanks, and to a stagnant chain of pools in the case of all but the largest rivers. If the monsoon should fail, or cease early, the conditions are aggravated : the supply of the prime neces- sity of existence is cut off at innumerable sources, causing an overwhelming call on those that remain, which are subject to greatly enhanced risks of pollution. It is too frequently the custom to use the same supply, indiscriminately, for the various purposes of drinking, bathing, washing clothes, and watering cattle ; and it will be understood that in these circumstances an
1 Water-supply systems, conserved on modern principles, are now (1905) at the disposal of ninety communities, having an aggregate population of 6J- millions.
Influence of temperature
Preponderating influence of the environment outbreak of cholera is frequently added to failure of the food supply. It will be seen later how, by its influence on the mortality and the food-supply, the rainfall also largely affects the birth-rate.
As regards the range of temperature, which varies greatly in different areas at different seasons, but which is generally far greater than in Europe, it is easy to trace its influence on the important vital condition of the supply of pure air in dwellings. It largely determines the materials and structure of these ; hence the striking contrast between the reed and thatch hut of the typical Bengal hamlet and the impervious mud and brick structures of the dry inland tracts where the range is highest and where protection from extremes of heat and cold is necessitated. Here, also, dwellings were aggregated under the necessity for defence, and consequently present all the features of camps ; there were no arrangements for site- ventilation, or conservancy ; and even now the cattle are driven at night into clo^e courtyards, and often into dwellings, which are devoid of appliances for the admission of light and air. The joint-family system involves overcrowding, especially in sleeping rooms, which is most marked in towns ; and where the range of temperature is greatest, the effects of the scanty resources in clothing are uLo most manifest. There is abundant evidence to show that these conditions, varying in degree over large areas, determine the incidence of diseases of the ' zymotic ' class, and especially of typhus and the contagious fevers ; also of pneumonia, phthisis, and other fatal lung dis- orders, which are favoured by aggregation in foul air, and which are the causes of a very large proportion of the sickness and mortality.
To sum up, we have a vast and heterogeneous population, in a primitive and rigid stage of civilization which involves certain physical and moral disabilities, dependent in general on the land not only for daily bread, but for all material resources. The marked feature of the general situation is man's com- parative subordination to the environment, against which the struggle is maintained, with varying issue, rather than with his fellow men. The character of the rainfall determines the quantity and quality of the food and water-supplies, and through these, in a large measure, the health of the community, as evidenced by the high and fluctuating birth and death-rates and by the frequent reversal of their normal relations; and this occurs not only in specially unfavourable years, but in certain months of the year under more ordinary circumstances.
Vital statistics their defective character
In approaching the discussion of the vital statistics of the Vital general population, it is necessary to explain that we are still ftatistics. far from a complete and accurate record of the births and defective deaths, and of the causes of death ; that there is no record character, of marriages, and but a very inadequate one of sickness. 'Registration was first instituted in British India generally about thirty years ago, much later in certain areas, and to-day (1905) some of the less accessible hill tracts and most of the Native States are still outside its scope. The difficulties encountered have been great, and many remain. The people, doubtful of the object, shrink from publicity in domestic affairs. The agents are, for the most part, illiterate village watchmen, or town police, who are required to report to the police station at regular but varying intervals the simple fact of birth or death and the supposed cause in the latter event. As to the record of actual occurrences, the error of defect varies considerably in different areas : in some it is almost negligible, in others it may amount to nearly one-third of the total, but there is a general progressive improvement everywhere. The statement of the cause of death leaves much to be desired : the vast majority die without qualified medical attendance, and we have to rely on the crude impressions of the people, who attribute most fatal illnesses marked by a rise of temperature to * fever, 7 and who, during epidemics, frequently conceal either the fact or the true cause, in order to escape sanitary measures. At such times, and also during famine, special sources of fallacy arise from the migration of large numbers, so that, even if the facts are obtained by special effort, the local ratios are vitiated. Everywhere efforts are made to check the records by local inquiries, and, in many towns, by supervision of the appointed places for burial or burning.
Birth rate in india
A general Census was first taken between 1867 and 1872, and was repeated in 1881, 1891, and 1901. The value of these enumerations has been inestimable, though the return of ages is by no means accurate and there has possibly been some con- cealment of females. The figures have enabled us to obtain an approximate estimate of the true birth and death-rates, and of the mortality by age and sex, and thus have afforded data for the construction of a Life Table. The great fluctuations in the birth and death-rates, and the frequent reversal of their normal rela- tions, are marked in the irregular progress of the population, and for this reason the census figures soon become inaccurate for ratio calculations in inter-censal periods. With these limitations, it will be seen that the material for a closely reasoned analysis is often lacking. But the recorded facts are of great value in the study of the conditions of each area ; of far less use, though still suggestive, for inter- Provincial comparisons. Any attempt to trace the effect of sanitary measures on the health of the people is at present beset by obvious fallacies, for as registration improves the rates tend to rise in any case; but there is abundant evidence forthcoming on this question in the vital statistics of the troops and prisoners which are discussed later on in this chapter.
The following statement gives a general view of the birth- rates recorded in different Provinces during the two decades ending with 1890 and 1900, with other particulars for com- parison : Birth-rates per 1,000 in the Chief Provinces of British India>
1881-1900.
Rattoofbirths PROVINCE. Mean annual rate I recorded) I or 1X81-90 t Non- Famine ) Mean annual rate (recorded) for 180,1-J0<(Famine.)
Highest and lowest annual rates (recorUed)L (mean of 189,1- KK>O) per i,(xx> married v^omen (15- 40) according to Crnus of ityi.
Probable true normal rate of population'. Bengal (not 35'9 i 4 3-o | 28-1 ( 219-6 51-8
available
Assam
31'8 35-4 239 1 190.3 United Provinces 39-5 37-7t 3i-i! 220.9 44.2 Punjab 39- ' 4i-9t 48.4
37- 45-8 Central Provinces 41.4 35-9t 48.9 { 26-8 ( 1863
Berar
40-8
38-4 1
5-5 >
219-0
Madras
29.2
29*0 25- l I 164-2 50-3 Bombay
34-3
34- it
39- | 26-9 \
200-4
49-3
Lower Burma .
22.6
30.1
20-0 \
227.6
The probable true normal rates (column 6) are taken from the Report of Mr. Hardy, F.I.A., F.S.S., Census Report, 1891, vol. ii. The rate for all Provinces (combined) is calculated at 48*8 per milk, and thi* may be assumed to represent, approximately, the rates for the areas for which separate calculations have not yet been made* The subsequent decade (1891-1900) was marked by abnormal conditions arising from famine and plague. Famine in these areas during last quinquennium.
In spite of defective registration, the recorded rates are gener-
ally high in comparison with those of Europe, outside Germany,
Austria-Hungary, and Italy : the ' probable true rates ' are
much higher without exception. There is great variation both
in the recorded rates of different areas for the same period, and
in those of different years for the same area : this is partly due
to the influence of famine, and partly to differences in the
registration error, the approximate measure of which is obtained
by comparing the * probable true rates ' with those recorded
in the non-famine period (1881-90). In Europe the average
number of births per 1,000 married women at age 15-50 may
be put at 250; and consequently the Indian rates (column 5)
indicate defective registration or relative infertility, and doubt-
less both factors are in operation.
How affected by marriage customs
We may now proceed to discuss the chief influences which How
determine these characteristic results. The marriage customs affected
marriage must undoubtedly be given a foremost place, for marriage is, in customs. effect, not a voluntary contract as in the West, but a religious obligation, binding on both sexes, which is enforced by the social code and necessitated by the law of inheritance. Briefly, it is as a rule contracted, in the higher castes which acknow- ledge Brahmanical authority, with a girl who has not arrived at puberty (though consummation is generally deferred till then), while the husband is often much older ; unions are forbidden between persons of the same kindred and between those of differing castes and sub-castes ; more than one wife is permitted, failing male issue by the first ; widowers may remarry, but this is not permitted to widows. The results are that marriage is almost universal, at the earliest practicable age ; there is disparity in the ages of husband and wife ; and, as a consequence, an excessive proportion of widows. These general rules and results are subject to modification in the practice of the lower Hindu castes, Musalmans, Buddhists, Native Chris- tians, and some aboriginal tribes. Among them, as a rule, the age of the female at marriage is generally higher and the dis- parity in the ages of husband and wife is less ; there is also a freer choice, from. the absence of caste restrictions ; and there is no restriction on widow remarriage. The following figures will afford a clearer view of the situation by comparison with Europe : it is interesting to note in passing that Hungary occupies a position, in this respect, midway between East and West Percentage Distribution of the Population by Civil Condition.
AGE AND CIVIL CONDITION.
EUROPE (EXCLUDING HUNGARY).
Male.
Frmalf.
Male.
Female.
( Unmarried All ages < Married ( Widowed
49.2
45-4
5-4
34-4
47.6
17.9
63-0
33-o 3'5
59-o
32-0
8-3
! Unmarried
Married
Widowed
51-8
45.8
2-4
"3
82.8
5-9
95-
4-7
005
85.0
I 4 .0
0-2
S Unmarried
Married
Widowed
n-5
817
5-3
a -5
8cM
17-4
36 o
62-0
1.4
' 28-6
678
3-5
Among the many interesting facts to which these figures point, we may merely note the contrasts displayed in the proportions of the population married in India and Europe, and again in the proportions of the widowed and the single among males and females in India at the two age periods, denoting the earlier age at marriage of females and its penalty in widowhood. Here, then, are the conditions for a high birth-rate ; but, at the same time, factors that doubtless operate to diminish the full measure of fertility which the mere marriage-rate would lead one to expect among a people the vast majority of whom are impelled by religious and social sanctions to disregard prudential considerations. The early age at marriage, with the premature strain on the immature functions, probably leads to early exhaustion in both sexes, which is perhaps hastened by the debilitating effects of malarial fevers to which all are subject ; the practice of the prolonged suckling of infants may aKo operate. Lastly, the earliest age of procreative power is not the age of greatest fecundity.
By agricultural distress or prosperity
But, in dealing next with the causes of the fluctuations in the or between rate we ^ m ^ influences at work of far greater and less prosperity, questionable force : namely, those that affect prosperity, which, in India, is summed up for the masses in sufficient food and a relative diminution of sickness. The marriage rate is affected by the character of the harvests, as the ceremony involves lavish expenditure, loans being generally raised for which the crops are the security. But the birth-rate is a far more sensitive barometer of prosperity, because the marriage of children does not usually connote cohabitation. Nothing is clearer than the effects of marked abundance of food or the reverse upon the general state of the public health, and of both food and health upon the birth-rate. With any marked rise or fall in food prices there is immediately a similar movement in the death-rate, and an opposite movement in the birth-rate nine months later. When famine prevails and, subsequently, other factors co-operate, marriages are deferred and the able- bodied leave their homes in search of work or relief. With the recurrence of the first bountiful harvest the tide turns, deferred marriages are celebrated, cohabitation is resumed, and the sexual instinct, depressed by privation, resumes its sway forti- fied by rest and by comparatively abundant food. The death- rate now falls rapidly to below the normal, owing to the previous elimination of the physically weakest ; and nine months later the birth-rate (calculated on the total population, which now contains a larger proportion of persons at the reproductive ages) rises with a bound and is maintained above the normal, generally for about a year, when the ordinary relations of the rates are resumed.
Similar influences may be traced in the normal seasonal p y nor mal incidence of the birth-rate, which is stamped with the same seasonal characteristic features in every Province, though these are xanatlons * subject to slight local modifications referable to the period of the harvest and of the greatest sickness and mortality. Speaking generally, where the staple food harvest is reaped in October there is a sudden rise in the birth-rate in July, continued through August to the maximum in September-October.
There is a gradual fall during November-December, though the rate is still above the mean, which is reached in January ; thenceforth the decline persists more or less steadily, to attain the lowest point in June. Where the staple food harvest comes in December, events are consistently postponed for about two months. The influence of the general health is manifest if the birth and death-rates are plotted together on a chart with an interval of nine or ten months between them, i.e. the death-rate for January against the birth-rate for October, and so on : the result is a striking contrast in the curves, the one falling as the other rises, though there may be occasional trifling exceptions to the rule. Again, on irrigated tracts with adequate drainage, where the crops are secure, the birth-rate is consistently high : conversely, where in water-logged areas the soil deteriorates and the people are prostrated by chronic malarial disease, there is often depopulation from impairment of fecundity.
Comparison of Hindu and Muhammadan fecundity
Proportion of male and female births
Regarding the influence of race, the records only furnish particulars under local territorial distinctions : the main ethnic elements are nearly everywhere largely interfused, and any comparison between areas wherein the dominant element varies is vitiated by the registration error. Religion affords no reli- able clue to ethnic distinctions. It is possible, however, to arrive at some estimate of the relative fecundity of the different races and sects by means of the Census returns of the propor- tion of children in each. As a rule, the aboriginal tribes and the Musalmans (who are often proselytes from the lower Hindu castes) stand out from the general community in this respect. This is due partly to the more favourable marriage customs previously alluded to, and possibly also to the greater variety of food, which generally contains a larger measure of the animal element than among Hindus.
The proportion borne by males to females at birth is shown below : - PROVINCE. Males horn to 100 females.
(Mean of
1891-1900).
Punjab .
11 1-6
United Provinces
109-0
Bombay
08.1
Assam .
107-7
Lower Burma
107.4
Berar .
106.8
Bengal
106.5
Central Provinces
106.4
Madras . .
104.4
1 Proclaimed Clans ' (Infanticide Act)
106.4
The range within each area is greatest where registration, always at its worst in regard to events affecting females, is most defective. The highest proportion of males is returned in areas where the male population outnumbers the female, and where the practice of female infanticide formerly prevailed ; but in certain parts of two of the Provinces at the top of the list registration is notoriously very defective, viz. in the Western Punjab and in Sind. The records of Berar, where registration is at its best, show that the excess of males born in the January to June or July period is always very much higher than during the rest of the year, the mean during a normal quinquennium being, for the first six months of the year, 107-3, an d for the last six months 104-8. Now the corre- sponding periods of conception are April to September and October to March ; and the latter period is associated with three
distinct factors the harvest, the season of least sickness and mortality, and that of the lowest temperature, which would appear to influence favourably the relatively higher production of females l .
Walking habits, inactivity, obesity
2017: Indians 8th laziest among 46 nations
Drive or walk? Given a choice, most Indians will opt for a car no matter how short the distance.Well, now a 46-country study has shown that we are among the laziest countries in the world. India is ranked 39, with people averaging just 4,297 steps a day. That's among the findings of a study by Stanford University researchers using step-counters installed in most smartphones to track the walking activity of about 700,000 people in 46 countries around the world. The most active, according to the study published in the journal `Nature', are people in Hong Kong, who averaged 6,880 a steps a day .
The worst nation was Indonesia, where people walked about half as much as residents of Hong Kong, averaging 3,513 steps a day.
The worldwide average is 4,961 steps, with Americans, ranking at 30 in the study , walking an average 4,774 steps.
The top half of the chart includes Hong Kong, China, Ukraine and Japan, all walking over 6,000 steps daily , while the countries at the bottom of the rung are Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.
Data shows that Indian women walk even less than the men. While Indian women walk barely 3,684 steps, men have registered 4,606 daily. The study found that for both males and females, a larger number of steps recorded is associated with significantly lower obesity. For females, the preva lence of obesity increas es more rapidly as step volume decreases (232% obesity increase for females versus 67% increase for males; comparing lowest versus highest activity).
Delhi-based dietician Ritika Samaddar suggests at least 10,000 steps a day to remain fit, “People feel that if they have walked for an hour in the morning, they have got their share of physical exercise. But you need to be active throughout the day .“
So are Indians likely to be more obese than Chinese? Stanford researchers say in countries with less obesity people typically walked a similar amount every day . In nations with higher rates of obesity , there were larger gaps between those who walked a lot and those who walked very little.
Urban and rural birth rates
The results of urban and rural conditions on the birth-rate Urban and will be gathered from the statement below :
rates.
Ratio per 1,000 of population
PROVINCE.
(Mean of 1892-6)*. Urban.
Rural.
Bengal
24-9
34-3
Assam .
24.4
31-5
40.2
37*4
Punjab
40.4
43-8
Central Provinces
32.2
357
Berar .
38-2
37-5
Madras
32.1
27.4
Bombay
28.5
36-4
Burma
22.3
28-6
The rates are, as a rule, lower in the towns, and lowest in the large industrial centres, owing, chiefly, to the unequal sex distribution of their population which is affected by the demand for adult male labourers e.g. in Calcutta (1901) the propor- tion of males to females was as two to one, in Bombay over three to two, and in Rangoon nearly two and a half to one. The tendency to a general rise in the price of food which has marked recent times, while benefiting the agriculturist, has doubtless pressed heavily on the poorer classes in towns, where also the general standard of vitality is lower. Lastly, the women are frequently sent to their rural homes for their confinement.
Proportion of male and female
The record of still-births has unfortunately not been main- Proportion tained generally, but for Berar the returns give what is ^[ r ^ 1 " doubtless a fair indication of the proportion which occur in an agricultural community in India. Here, during the decade ending 1900, still-born males were at the rate of 5-2, and females of 4*1, per cent, of the live-births of the respective sexes. In the larger cities, however, the rates are far higher : in Calcutta the average for the three years ending 1900 was 8 per cent, of the live-births ; in Rangoon it was 1 1-6 per cent. ; and in Bombay the mean for 1895-9 was I2 '9 P er cent, rising to 18-7 in the last year. But here the rates have recently
1 See article * Sex,' Encyclopaedia Britannica^ 9th Edition. a Statistics for later years furnished to the Government of India do not discriminate between urban and rural birth-rates.
Recorded death-rates
been affected by the prevalence of plague and famine, which have driven mothers from and to the city in a destitute condition. The figures represent the pressure of want and insanitary conditions, and, doubtless, of barbarous midwifery ; at the same time there is no guarantee that all these infants were actually born dead. The unfavourable conditions attend- ing parturition in India ensure a high mortality of mothers and infants, but the way is open to gross neglect and, occasion- ally, to infanticide.
The introductory remarks, and the account given of marriage and the birth-rate* will have prepared the reader for some of the notable characteristics of the mortality figures. The following table affords a review of the death-rates' recorded
Mortality-rates per 1,000 in the Chief Provinces of British India, 18811900. Number PROVINCE.
Recorded mean tor 1881-90.
Recorded mean for 1891-5.
51 ; variable rate of evolution in isolated land areas, 51 ; comparafive uniformity of life in the ocean, 52 ; want of strict contemporaneity in geological formation, 52 ; \ise of local stratigraphical names, 52, 53; classifi- cation of Indian strata, 53 ; the datum line in stratigraphy, 53 ; the Olenellus zone, 53 ; Pre-Cambrian unfossiliferous rocks, 53 ; fossiliferous deposits, 53 ; four main groups of Indian rocks, 54 ; table oi arrangement and chief divisions of these groups, 55 ; Archaean group, 54; Purana group, 54, 56; grouping of the fossiliferous strata, 56 ; the Upper Palaeozoic break, 56; Dravidian and Aryan groups, 56, 57 ; the Dravidian group in extra-peninsular India, 57 ; fresh-water deposits in the Aryan group, 57 ; marine deposits in the Aryan group, 57.
II. Pre-Cambrian history of India, 57- 64 ; the Archaean and Purana eras, 57, 58 ; the great Eparchaean break, 58 ; Archaean era, area of Archaean rocks, 58 ; origin and nature of the fundamental complex, 58, 59; ortho- gneisses and paragneisses, orthoscbists and paraschists, mixed gneisses, 59; chief divisions of Archaean group, 59, 60 ; the Dharwanan system, 60 ; the Purana era, distribution of the group, 6 1 ; lower and upper divisions of Purana group, 61 ; the Cuddapah and Kurnooi systems, 61,62; Vindhyan sys- tem, 62; the Purana group in Burma, 62, 63 ; possible existence of Purana group in the Himalayas, 63, 64.
III. Cambrian and post-Cambrian history of India, 64-102 ; (a) the Dravidian era, 64-67 ; the Cambrian of the Salt Range, 64; purple sandstone and Neobolus beds, 64,65 ; magnesian sandstone series and salt pseudomorph zone, 65 ; Palaeo- zoic of Central Himalayas, 65 ; the Vaikritas and Haimantas (Upper am- brian) 65, 66; Gothlandian (Silurian), 66 ; conformable succession to the Carboniferous system, 66 ; Devonian of Chitral, 67; Infra-Trias of Hazara,
See also
Public Health And Vital Statistics: India
Public Health And Vital Statistics, 1909: India
Public Health And Vital Statistics, India: 2014-2016
