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selves of the benefits of the charity, and 12 deaths in the Cancer Hospital
under similar circumstance. 10 parishioners, however, died in the
Consumption Hospital, and 2 in the Cancer Hospital. By deducting,
therefore, the large number of 90, the mortality of our parish will be at
the rate of 21.4 per thousand per annum: it therefore follows that 240
persons died in excess of what has been termed a moderately healthy
ratio, which the Registrar General has fixed as 17 per thousand.
Small pox has been fatal to 2 persons—in both cases vaccination had
been unsuccessfully or not at all performed. In the previous year no
death from small pox occurred—this tends to prove the inefficiency in the
working of the Compulsory Vaccination Act, as although the births of
1464 children were registered during the year, the certificates of successful
vaccination registered amounted but to 776. I believe an amended Act
of Parliament urgently called for to secure to all the benefits of the most
perfect and harmless remedy against this frightful disease, namely vaccination.
I think if such an Act could be efficiently and thoroughly
worked, this formidable scourge would be entirely banished from our
country. In each street where the disease showed itself, prompt measures
were taken to whitewash and otherwise thoroughly cleanse all the habitations
in the locality. Several cases, occurring in the dirtiest and in
crowded localities, where it was found impossible to carry out efficient
sanitary legislation, were also removed by my instructions to the Small
Pox Hospital, to which establishment the parish subscribes.
A severe epidemic of scarlet fever and of obstinate cases of sore throat
has yisited the whole metropolis and Kensington during the past year. It
appears impossible under our present sanitary knowledge to point out the
exact cause of the occasional severe visitation of this and other diseases of
a similar class; but they, however, without doubt obey certain fixed laws
and require the presence of some hitherto unknown atmospheric influence
to give them their malignant epidemic character, and it is equally to be
noted that their virulence is in a marked degree controlled by the absence
or presence of certain exciting causes, in the shape of any contamination
of the atmosphere caused by decomposing animal or vegetable matter.
The outbreak of scarlet fever began to get above the ordinary ratio during
the month of July, and attained its highest point by a gradual increase
in the month of September. It then gradually declined till it reached
its nominal ratio. Contrary to the opinion of many sanitarians, I believe
this disease, like typhus fever, is materially owing to local causes which,