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68
In reviewing the above table the Zymotic class of
diseases are the first to claim attention. In the past year
the deaths from these maladies amounted to 20. In the
previous year 33 were registered, thus giving a less
number by 13 in favour of 1872. It is satisfactory to note
that in the present table there is a total absence of all
record of deaths from Small Pox, Measles, Quinsy, Croup,
Fever, Metria, Carbuncle and Influenza, the mortality
being confined to five diseases of this class, viz.:—Scarlet
Fever, 7, against 21 in the previous year; Diphtheria 1 (the
same as in the previous year); Whooping Cough, 6 against 1;
Erysipelas, 1 against none; and Diarrhœa, 5 against 6 in
the former record.
The absence from the present table of all record of
deaths from Small Pox and Fever is a circumstance of a
very gratifying character. It was long since predicted
that the completion of the great intercepting sewer would
have a most beneficial effect in reducing the number of
cases of fever in every locality through which the same
was made to pass, by reason of the large amount of branch
drainage which it would necessitate, and in no Sub-district,
it is believed, has this prediction been more fully realised
than in Putney. Amongst the poor of this parish
especially, it has been remarked, that of late years scarcely
a single case of Typhoid Fever has proved fatal, and but
very few indeed, and those of the mildest possible type,
have presented themselves for treatment to the District
Union Medical Officer. Before the Sub-district obtained
the advantages referred to, fever cases were scarcely ever
absent from the poorer parts of the town; and no wonder !
since the majority of these places were at one time
completely riddled with cesspools, and the water from
nearly all the wells in such neighbourhoods visibly contaminated
with fœcal matter, and teeming with living
organisms (see reports for 1865 and 1867.)