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9
If it be permissible to offer any observation upon the foregoing
figures, and bearing in mind that comparisons of the kind are open to
fallacies, it may be said that St. George-the-Martyr, Southwark, stands in
a worse position with regard to its death-rate than London has stood in
any ten-yearly period since 1840.
Zymotic or Preventable Death-Rate.
It may be noted that the term "zymotic" applies to the following
seven diseases :—Small-pox, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping
cough, " fever" (i.e., typhus, relapsing, puerperal, simple, continued and
typhoid), and diarrhoea.
I have called the above zymotic diseases ''preventable," because I
regard all communicable diseases, broadly speaking, as coming under
that heading. Diarrhoea is a sympton as well as a specific disease, and
although not usually communicated from one person to another, it may be
regarded as the almost invariable result of bad environment. At the same
time, it must be clearly understood that a vast amount of preventable
diseases, such as that due to alcoholism, is not zymotic. In other words,
while all zymotic diseases are preventable, not all preventable diseases are
zymotic.
The corrected death-rate in St. George's, Southwark, from the seven
principal zymotic diseases was 3 33 per 1,000 in 1900 as against 2.19 per
1,000 in the whole of London for the same period, and 2.5 in the 33 great
towns of England and Wales.
As in the calculation of the general death-rate, so with the zymotic
death-rate, the deaths of non-parishioners occurring within the district
have been excluded ; on the other hand, the deaths of parishioners in public
institutions outside the parish have been included. Unless a proper
distribution of these deaths be made, especially of those from zymotic
diseases, no trustworthy data can be secured upon which to calculate the
rates of mortality.
Among the 43 sanitary areas the zymotic death-rate ranged from 0.78
in St. George's, Hanover Square, 0.84 in St. Martin's in the Fields, 0.89
in the City of London, 1.08 in St. James, Westminster, and 1.14 in the
Strand, to 3.02 in Shoreditch, 3.25 in St. Luke, 3.33 in St. George the
Martyr, Southwark, 3.34 in Shoreditch, and 4.10 in Limehouse.