PDF (Whole thesis) - UTas ePrints - University of Tasmania

235
one quarter of the average for the month of July and \'/as
considerab ly exceeded by spontaneous evaporation . The
ozone mean was rather more than 3/4 of a degree of the
chromatic scale, less than the average of the three preceding
Julys. The electrometer whi ch indicated entire absence of
electricity last month, for this, returns 26 negative records
and 8 positive, the latter especially to be noted as occurring
between the 9th and 19th days of the month . 10
.Hall also noted that in the Hobarton registration district of 25 ,000
people, the deaths from 11 causes during July amounted to 114, being 60
more than the average for July of the 5 previous years, and \'li thin 7 of
all the deaths that occurred in the 3 previous months of April, May and
June.
to.
Of these deaths , 80 took place \'li thin the 14 days especially alluded
Under 10 years of age, the number of' deaths exactly corresponded \'lith
the numb er during July, 1859, the healthiest July of the last 5 years .
However, ab ove 60 years of age , the oldest being 93 , the unprecedented
number of 49 deaths occurred, \'lhilst in July 1859 there \'/ere only 8.
Moreover, the \'leather during July closely resemb led in many respects that
\'lhich prevailed in London during the cholera years of 1832, 1849 and 1859,
\'lith the remarkab le difference that Ozone \'/as comp letely absent in London
at the time, whilst being in abundance in Hobarton.
This unusually large number of deaths in the aged group in July
\'/as due to a severe epidemic of influenza \'lhich spread from Sydney south
to Tasmania in June, 1860 , reaching its peak in Hobarton about July 16 .
As the \'leather conditions were so exceptional exactly at the time of the
epidemic, Hall naturally linked the t\'IO together in another noteworthy
contribution to Australian medical science, namely an article "On Influenza
Epidemic in Hobarton (Tasmania) in July, 1860u , which appeared in the
.
Octob er, 1860 , number of the Australian Medical Journal .
By 1860, Hall's interest in sanitary science and disease had
led him to become a corresponding member of the Epidemiological Society of
London, an influential and important scientific and medical body which was
founded on July 30 , 1850 , under the presidency of Lord Ashley (the Earl o f
Shaftsbury) in response to a suggestion made by J.H. Tucker in the Lancet
on September 15 , 1849 , that a society should be estab lished especially to
study diseases such as cholera and smallpox .
Amongst its many activities
the Epidemiological Society encouraged the \'lriting of special reports of
epidemics as they occurred in different localities, so that the general
_ history of these visitations might be ascertained.
In his article
10 Mercury, September 4, 1860.