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REPORT
on the
SANITARY CONDITION OF ST. MAM, ISLINGTON,
FOR JULY, 1870.
No. CLXXIX.
Taking the difference of the number of weeks into consideration, the
tables for this month show some slight increase of sickness and
considerable increase of mortality since the close of June. The number
of deaths registered in the four weeks of July was 373, and the number
of cases of disease newly treated in the public practice of the parish
was 2917. The mortality appears high also, as compared with recent
Julies with the exception of July 1868 when 363 deaths were registered.
The sickness, however, has been rather less than in July last year,
and considerably less than in July, 1868. The spring epidemic of
measles has a good deal abated, 110 cases having been recorded against
264 in June, and 18 deaths againt 26. There has been no remarkable
difference in the prevalence of scarlet fever, but the mortality from it
has fallen from 45 in five weeks to 26 in four weeks. The prevalence
of diarrhœal affections has been about double what it was in June : 75
deaths have been registered, and in addition, 11 from summer cholera
or choleraic diarrhoea. This last number is unquestionably very high.
Twenty-six cases of fever, mostly typhoid, have been recorded, and 9
deaths—again high numbers—a considerable number of cases also have
been brought to my knowledge by private practitioners. In nearly
all these cases I have traced the origin of the disease to some defect in
the arrangement or condition of house drainage, and exposure to
sewage effluvia; the attacks in one house appeared to have originated
from the use of water contaminated through the waste pipe, and that of
one person from the effluvia arising from a neglected dust bin. In one
district of the parish typhoid is so prevalent that I requested our
Surveyor to take measures for the disinfection of the sewers, while the
house drains in the immediate neighbourhood of the infected places
were disinfected under my own direction. We found very few persons
object to our Inspectors carrying out the sanitary work in private