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17
On reviewing these particulars, it is satisfactory to find that
the general mortality is less than that of the preceding year; and also
less than the average. And here it must be observed that no allowance
has been made for increase in the population, which naturally tends to
augment the number of deaths.
The number of deaths from Zymotic diseases has also suffered
a diminution. This truly is small; yet the decrement has been constant
during the last three years.
The number of deaths, however, from the principal Zymotic
diseases has slightly increased. This mortality falls principally upon
infants and children.
Of the 301 deaths occurring during the year from these diseases,
229 took place in children under 5 years of age, and 26 between
the ages of 5 and 20; making a total of 255 under 20. And while we
are able to reduce gradually but steadily the mortality from other diseases,
we are met by at present insuperable obstacles in the case of
these principal Zymotic diseases, in the overcrowding and the occupation
of single rooms by entire families. Every year about 800 individuals
are added to the population, and have to be packed up in the same
number of houses.
Unquestionably overcrowding exists to a very great extent
in the district, and so long as this is allowed to remain and increase,
it will be found impossible to reduce the great mortality from these
diseases. If the estimate regulating the space required for each
individual at 300 cubic feet, and this is a very fair one, were adopted
in this district, we should find thousands of tenements overcrowded.
It is an everyday occurrence to find 3, 4, or even 5 children
suffering from these diseases, in one room. Often in a house
there are 10 or 15. In several of the fatal cases which have occurred
in the year, the children have been afflicted at the same time with
even two or three of these diseases; and when it is considered that
the effect of the morbid poisons producing them is increased by concentration,
the sufferers having to breathe the same air over and
over again, loaded with the poison, there can bo no wonder that
the fatal results are so great.
The deaths from diarrhoea were more than in the previous
year. Most of them occurred in children, 56 of the 58. I believe
that a large number of deaths from this disease might be prevented
by confining children to a milk diet. Among the poor there is no
nursery; the consequence is, that the children when young see the
parents' dinner, and of course cry for it, and to satisfy them, they are
fed with the food of an adult; often before they are a year old eating
as much solid food as a grown up person. Little or none of this
is digested; hence the limbs waste, they become atrophied, and
as it is vulgarly called, tun-bellied, and as soon as the weather
becomes warm, they die of diarrhœa, or suffer from a host of other
diseases.