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20
ISL 31
REPORT
of the
SANITARY CONDITION OF SAINT MARY, ISLINGTON.
FOR JANUARY, 1862.
No. LVIII.
Notwithstanding the prevalence of a depressed condition of general
health, with an appearance of influenza especially observed among
persons in easy circumstances, our death-rate, during the past month,
has been remarkably low. Had the average deaths of the last five
years occurred they would have amounted to 282. The number
actually registered was 52 under this number, viz., 230. Attacks of
pulmonary disease, which in January last year produced so high a
mortality, have this year been much less fatal. The mean mortality of
five years (corrected for increased population), from diseases of the
organs of respiration is 67. During this last month it has amounted
only to 42, or 25 under the average in January. Last year 24 persons
suffering from chronic disease of the heart were carried off, this month
there have been only 8 deaths from this cause, the mean of the previous
four years (un-corrected) being 12.
Among the zymotic maladies, continued fever and scarlet fever
prevailed extensively. There has as yet been no diminution in the
fatality of the latter. Twelve deaths from continued fever have been
registered, some of them in newly built houses; the condition of the
drainage of these houses has been specially enquired into. The bath
man at the Workhouse has died of "typhus" in the Fever Hospital;
it is probable that he imbibed the poison of the disease from the
vagrants admitted into the tramp ward, four of whom had been sent
away to the Fever Hospital, suffering from Typhus. His case is the
only one which has occurred among the regular inmates of the House.
It is my duty to add, that the overcrowding of houses, and especially
of sleeping rooms, is a condition which may alone give rise to Typhus,
but that this cause operates more certainly when the disease is
epidemic, and favours the reception of the disease on exposure to infection.
That Typhus is now prevailing in London is seen by the return
from the Fever Hospital, where the resident surgeon is now prostrated
with the disease. During the four weeks embraced by this report,