Surgery

in his study of Australian mortality believed that the deaths under the headings nervous, cardio-vascular, genitourinary and "all other" diseases could not be satisfactorily carried through the 60 years of this century in Australia as separate classes of disease, if deaths at ages 55 to 64 years were being considered. At these ages, the majority of deaths due to nervous diseases were in fact due to cerebral cardio-vascular disease; similarly, deaths from genito-urinary diseases were terminal stages in a general cardio-vascular degenerative disease. For these classes of disease, the male mortality rates were about 11 per 1,000 per annum in the first four decades of this century in Australia and almost 13 per 1,000 in the fifth and sixth decades. The female rates at the same age were slightly lower, around 7'5 per 1,000 in the first five decades and about 6·6 in the sixth decade. At ages 65 to 74 years, the findings were similar, the male rates being about 10% higher in the fifth and sixth decades than in the first four decades; in females at these ages, 65 to 74, the rates were lower in the sixth decade than in any other; in 1951-1960, the rates at ages 65 to 74 were 33 per 1,000 for males and 20 per 1,000 for females. Lancaster concluded that the male death rates from the combined group of causes mentioned above had "substantially" increased (i.e., by about 10%) over the 60 years of the survey, but that the female rates had declined.