The Semipolatinsk town-hospital commenced the
year with 9 patients, 81 were admitted later on, 67
discharged, 13 died, and 7 remained, whilst 454 outpatients
paid 554 visits. When I was at Semipolatinsk
the free hospital had been opened a little more than
a year. During the first seven months of its existence
there entered 226 male and 205 female patients, of
the following social grades :— Upper classes, 20, clergy,
18; merchants, 8 ; bourgeois, 186; peasants, 80,
Cossacks, 14 ; soldiers, 77 ; Kirghese, Sarts, and
Tatars, 28, amongst whom the chief diseases were intermittent
fever, mucous diarrhoea, rheumatism, catarrh
of the respiratory organs, diseases of the abdominal
organs, inflammation of the jaws, abscesses, eruptions,
etc. *
I have already alluded to the number of young
recruits who are sent every year to Turkistan. ^ O f
these there were in the hospitals of the Semipolatinsk
province, at the commencement of the year, 2 ; there
were added during the year, 122; discharged, 120;
died, 4 ; whilst of the lower ranks of the reserve army
there was in hospital, at the commencement of the
ralinsk, 14 beds ; Kokpety, 4 beds ; and Koton Karagai, 6 beds. In
the military hospitals at the beginning of the year the patients, a
certain proportion being civilians, numbered 124, and there were subsequently
admitted 2 ,917 . Of these 2,875 were discharged, 59 died and
107 remained m hospital at the end of the year. The number of outpatients
attending the military hospitals was 12,947 ! the number 0
their visits, 25,274. • .
* The chief diseases in the town hospital were : typhus and typhoid
fever 9 ; intermittent fever, 7 ; tuberculosis, 7 ; venereal diseases, 6 ; and
from’excessive drinking, 6. Of 13 deaths, there occurred from tuberculosis,
7 ; typhus, 2 ; burning, 1 ; frost, 1 ; dropsy, 1 ; and old age,
1. The patients admitted to the town hospital were : nobles and
merchants, 5 ; bourgeois and peasants, 19 ; postal employés, 3 ; soldiers,
reserve and serving, 14 ; Kirghese, 18 ; and, in addition, 5 children and
17 women, of the last of whom 4 were suffering from syphilis and 4 from
intermittent fever.
year, only 1 patient : 7 were added, 6 discharged, and
2 remained.*
The greatest mortality among the hospital patients
resulted from typhus, and next from inflammation of
the lungs. The total mortality was 2^4 per cent, of
the number of patients.
In connection with the foregoing might be mentioned
108 violent and accidental deaths, occurring throughout
the province, which were 44 less than in 1880.+
A large number of deaths by burning is a speciality
of nomad life, many of the Kirghese children
being scalded by the overturning of kettles, or burnt
by the ignition of their clothes from the fire in the
midst of the tent. The number of children vaccinated
by physicians, surgeons, and vaccination pupils was
6,104, the operation being successful in 4,259 cases.
This finishes, then, for the present, the ample information
I ventured to promise the reader concerning the
Semipolatinsk province, in wdiich I have endeavoured
to do justice to the minuteness with which statistics are
gathered and forwarded to Petersburg from the remotest
parts of the Empire. O f course the question
may be put, Are these figures trustworthy ? The answer
must be both “ Y e s ” and “ No.” When asking a
governor further south for statistics, he replied that
they had been able to gather none, the Russian popula-
* The chief diseases in the military mediGal establishments were :
intermittent fever, 689 ; local diseases of the urinary organs, 313 ; acute
and mucous, and in some cases bloody, diarrhoea, 146; acute catarrh
of the respiratory organs, 146 ; rheumatism, 145 ; venereal diseases, 142;
typhus, 136 ; and inflammation of the lungs and pleurisy, 126.
t Of violent deaths, 5 were murders (19 less than the year p receding),
6 were suicides, and 3 dead-bodies of infants were found. Of 22
sudden deaths, 8 were from sickness, and 12 from unknown causes ;
whilst of 72 accidental deaths, there were killed by lightning, 44 by
falling, 9 ; drowned, 24; frozen, 4, and burnt, 21.