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8
months 81 deaths from this disease were recorded : chiefly due to
pulmonary complications naturally fostered by the season, favourable
to the occurrence of Chest diseases, especially among the
ill-kept children of the poor, its principal victims.
GREAT INCREASE of MORTALITY AFTER FOGS.
In the month of December there occurred some of the most
remarkable and fatal fogs within living memory. They were
followed by an immediate rise in the death rate, and their influence
continued to be felt for some weeks. During the last four weeks
of the year the mortality was 91 per cent. above that of the corresponding
period of 1872; the increased number of deaths—due
beyond question to the atmospherical condition referred to,—
being chiefly from pulmonary diseases in the very aged and in
the young.
SMALL POX.
One death only took place from this disease during the
year, and it deserves special mention from the circumstances
of the case. The victim was a young married woman on a visit
to Town. Shortly after her arrival she sickened with the disease,
lay ill for twelve days in a room lighted by a skylight and without
any means of ventilation or heating (in the month of January),
and then died, not having been attended or seen by a medical
man throughout her illness. The body remained in the room for
three days,—the parish having no mortuary—although there were
some ten or eleven other persons living in two adjoining rooms,
over a stable. The case was not reported till the woman was dead.
I felt strongly that an inquest should have been hold in this case,
and endeavoured, but unsuccessfully, to bring it about. Medical
attendance might have been had for the asking, but was not
applied for. It seemed to me, therefore, that a presumption of
neglect was raised which made the case a proper one for inquiry,
especially as in other parts of the Country members of the sect
known as "peculiar people" have been put on their trial for
"manslaughter" for corresponding neglect, based on (an absurd but
as alleged) conscientious objection to the employment of human
aid for the cure of the sick. No such objection was raised in the
case under consideration. As the law now stands not only may
a person ill of an infectious disease be kept in a totally unfit place
to the common danger of the family and neighbours, but in afatal
case no difficulty appears to be experienced in obtaining the
burial of the body, as in this instance, without any medical
certificate of the cause of death. A few other cases of smallpox
occurred during the year, but so far as I am aware,
were all removed to the Stockwell Hospital.
The Sanitary history of the year would be incomplete without