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except those which do not come under the definition ofdrugs for National Health Service purposes. The com-mittee also listed the proprietary preparations whichmight be prescribed under the health service.

HEALTH CENTRES

A committee of the council has set out a plan for thelong-term

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Dr. John Ayrton Paris, president of the Royal Collegeof Physicians, told them that it was for them and forthem alone to determine what should be the future stateof the profession. The lifelong interest of Hastings,however, was the welfare of the provincial practitioner,and it was not until the Provincial Medical Associationhad been in existence for twenty-four years that he agreedto the wish of the majority to change in the title theword " Provincial " to " British "-an amendment firstproposed in these columns some years earlier’! Dr.McMenemey’s lecture was illustrated by lantern slides,which included a number of portraits of those early

pioneers of the association who assisted Hastings in hisproject.

In the famous boardroom of the Worcester Infirmary,wherein the inaugural meeting was held, visitors saw anexhibition of records illustrating the work of Hastings,including several of his publications.The British Medical Association, and particularly the

Worcester and Bromsgrove division, is to be congratulatedon this first Charles Hastings Festival, so happily coin-ciding with the Festival of Britain. Their decision tocommemorate the founder every few years in a Serviceof rededication to the objects of the association is indeeda happy one.1. Leading article, Lancet, 1832, ii, 574.

Public Health

DEATH-RATES AND SICKNESS-RATES OFMARRIED AND SINGLE WOMEN IN 1948

EILEEN M. BROOKEM.Sc. Lond.

STATISTICIAN, GENERAL REGISTER OFFICE, LONDON

* Blanks in this table denote that, for the cause-age-status group concerned, less than 20 deaths were -recorded.

A COMPARISON has been made of the death-rates andsickness-rates of married and single women, based on theRegistrar-General’s returns of death and the Survey ofSickness figures derived from monthly interviews heldby the Central Office of Information on behalf of theGeneral Register Office. Widows and divorcees havebeen excluded from the analysis for two main reasons.First, the group of single women may contain a numberwhose celibacy is due to bad health and poor physique,and whose sickness-rate would therefore be above the

average. It would not be practicable to include thewidowed and divorced with this group, since no suchsanction has applied in their case. Alternatively, sincesome single or divorced women, especially in the lowerage-groups, might be in a worse position economicallythan married women, with consequent repercussions ontheir health, it would be inadvisable to include themwith the married group. That age-specific death-ratesare not greatly influenced by the inclusion of the widowedand divorced with either the single or married groupsexcept at the higher ages is illustrated by table i.The lower age limit in the table has been set at 16

years because for National Insurance purposes this isthe age at which working life is presumed to begin ;the same lower limit has been taken in the Survey ofSickness. The death-rates of single women are higher

than those of the married in all quinquennial age-groupsunder 60. At ages under 45 the ratio (1-34) of the ratefor single to that for married women is lowest at ages20-24, whereas at ages 25-34 single women have a rateslightly more than 50% higher than that of the married.At ages from 45-64 the rate for single exceeds that formarried women, but less markedly, the ratio varyingbetween 1-00 and 1-19. Unfortunately there is no

TABLE I-DEATH-RATES PER 10,000 WOMEN BY MARITAL STATUSIN 1948

information more recent than that obtained at the1931 census to show which individual causes of deathare mainly responsible for the excess.

Table 11 shows for certain principal causes the death-rates per 100,000 married and single women in differentage-groups, based on the mortality experience of the years1930-32. Respiratory tuberculosis seems to be a pro-minent cause of the high death-rate among single as

TABLE II-DEATH-RATES PER 100,000 MARRIED AND SINGLE WOMEN AT DIFFERENT AGE-GROUPS IN 1930-32