In applying this title to the following remarks, I am quite aware of the fact that a number of authorities, whose opinion is entitled to the highest respect, will at once pronounce it a misnomer, for the reason that, while all statistical returns disclose an increase in the rate of mortality from cancer, such increase is held to be only apparent, and is not real, but is due to improved methods of diagnosis. This view was propounded and ably advocated in a paper by Mr. Geo. King, F.I.A., and Dr. Newsholme, printed in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, vol. liv, 1893. The position taken up in that paper was that, as cancer is a disease of middle life and old age, no satisfactory conclusion could be reached, except by a distribution of the living and the recorded deaths from cancer into the various age periods. The gentlemen named proceeded with their investigation on this basis, and arrived at the conclusion that no actual increase in the death rate from cancer had taken place, but that the apparent increase was due to improved methods of diagnosis and to erroneous methods of tabulating the data.

During the last few years the minds of medical men and of the general public have been exercised over the rapid and striking increase in the mortality from cancer, as shown by the statistics contained in the Registrar-General's Annual Reports. The following table, taken from these reports, shows how great this increase in registered mortality has been. The registered death-rate of males from this disease was 2·7 times, for females 2·0 times, and for both sexes together 2·2 times, as high in 1891 as in the average for the decade 1851-60.

In the following pages we give a description of the method pursued in an investigation into the Mortality Rates of the combined populations of New South Wales and Victoria, also tabular statements of the results at which we arrived. We offer no apology for trespassing on the courtesy of the Institute and asking their attention to a paper on such a well-worn subject as mortality rates, inasmuch as the rates of mortality being experienced by persons living in different parts of the world, are in themselves of more than passing interest. Moreover, where the population under consideration has been largely transplanted from a home on one side of the globe to a new land on the other, amidst new surroundings, experiencing a new climate, and cultivating almost virgin soil, its progress in the social scale will probably attract more than usual attention. The Australian Colonies afford an excellent example of such a new nation, and their rapid development makes their experience in mortality a subject of more than usual moment, both to themselves and to the mother country. Not only is there the desire to compare their present mortality rates with those prevailing in the mother land but there is the additional incentive to enquiry as to whether their own present experience is varying from that of their earlier days. To those engaged in the conduct of Industrial Business, rates of mortality, derived from the statistics of the general population, are an absolute necessity; and as industrial assurance is now making rapid strides in the Australian Colonies, a paper dealing with Australian mortality should be welcomed by those most closely associated with that class of business.