The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1900-10-03
A MATTER OF INTEREST.


is always interesting If we could only
have mortuary reports for the whole
Islands they would be more interesting
still, but these we cannot have as the
Board of Health has no funds for the
purpose. There is law enough and to
spare, but no cash to carry out the
law. When the legislature meets it
may find means for having these sta
tistics collected without any extra
charge. There are officers of the gov
eminent who are none too overworked,
to whose duties this business of
collecting the required statistics might
be added.
But TO return to this months NOR
tuary report The word consumption"
which has hitherto been used in the re-
ports has disappeared, and for a mo-
ment one began to think we had had
one month of the year free from deaths
from this cause, but a little inspection
proved that this was not the case, the
deaths were listed under their proper
name tuberculosis" and still headed
the dismal procession being credited
below the average for the previous
months of this year though even at
this rate the number of deaths from
tuberculosis would be greater than
those of the previous year, which by
the way was greater than any year
before it.
The number of deaths from typhoid
10 81,
recently made by certain persons in
authority, and one begins to believe
that a good deal of alarmist talk may
possibly be credited to people in SINH
lar position on the mainland. The
deaths from typhoid in the month of
September, when we We're told that it
was becoming almost epidemic amount
ed to 9. In March last when no one
said that there was anything like a
threatened epidemic of typhoid, the
number of deaths from this disease was
10, the largest of any month during the
year. The value of the alarmist cry
can be judged from these very peril
nent figures.
In listing the diseases under their
tain amount OF carelessness. The same
disease appears under it's Latin and
again under its English appelatson. 1t
asjust been pointed out that the Eng
lish term Consumption" has been
dropped for the Latin term "tubercu-
losis" but both terms are not used.
One finds however that five people died
of disease of the heart and one died
of "morhus cords" Of course the lat
ter must be something very different
from the former One feels a sort
of pity for those poor fellows who only
died from so common a thing as dis
ease of the heart" but to die of ''mor-
bus cords" must have been to end life
in a sort of scientific halo of glory
However this halo all fades away when
it is remembered that the terms are
synonymous, but couched in different
languages
in point of fact the language of the
fnortuary report of the Board of Health,
always reminds one of the menu of a
third class restaurant, where the cooks
knowledge of French is a minus guam
tity and one reads of potatoes jumped
la maitre dhotel, and pommes de
terres fried and other absurdities of
similar character being, linguistically,
neither fish, flesh, fowl nor good red
herrings. 1t would be good thing for
the Board of Health when issuing its
report to knock out such absurdities az
'morbus cords" and let the public know
what the people are dying of in Ian
guage that they understand, which is
plain, unvarnished vulgar English.
The death rate for the month Is light
being 1918 per thousand, for the whole
population, but that for the japanese
is very heavy being 41.6O per thousand
The officials of the Board might make
some inquiry into this and find out what
the sanitary conditions are in which the
Japanese are living.