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The total number of persons treated within the workhouse was greater than in 1858,
but considerably less than in either of the two years preceding. The high mortality
of 23 per cent, of the cases treated resulted as usual from the nature of those diseases
which compel their victims to seek shelter in the workhouse. A hundred and nine
deaths were among persons who had been resident for some length of time in the
house. Among these were three deaths from fever, which was presumably contracted
within the workhouse walls. Although twenty-three cases of smallpox
were treated in the infirmary, the disease did not spread at all among the inmates
of the house; a very gratifying fact, and one which furnishes excellent proof of oar
ability to prevent the spread of this most contagious of diseases. I myself had no
share in the merit of these successful hygienic measures, which were effected wholly
under Mr. Bennett's superintendence.*
The great rise in the number of persons attending for medical advice at the workhouse
is partly due to the prevalence of measles, whooping-cough, and slight febrile
attacks in the first half of the year, but chiefly to the large amount of summer
diarrhoea, of which there was more in three weeks of July, 1859 than in the whole
three summer months of 1858. The same prevalence of the class of zymotic diseases
is the cause to which we must also ascribe the increase in the number of
patients visited at home.
Here I beg to be allowed a moment's digression. I wish to add my tribute of
regret to that of the whole of our poor population, at the loss which the parishes
have sustained in the premature death of the Visiting Surgeon of the Workhouse.
Mr. Knaggs's loss will be greatly felt by the sick poor of St. Giles's, to whom he was
endeared by his great assiduity and kindly sympathy.
The following scheme shows the amount of relief afforded to the poor by the
Bloomsbury Dispensary in each quarter of the year. As might be expected from the
manner in which medical assistance is here granted, the numbers do not vary so much
from one quarter to another as in the practice of the workhouse :—

In my report for 1858 I found that after allowance made for the propensity of
patients to seek medical aid at the place nearest them, little information was got
from an examination of the localities from which sick persons came to the public
institutions of the district, beyond what had already been ascertained from the death
returns of the year; I have therefore not entered on this examination in the present
report, except in the case of smallpox, and the result of my inquiries as to this disease
will be found in the following chapter.
* It is curious to remark that in October, just before tbe great rise in Small-pox, there was
quite a little epidemic of Cuieken-pox treated in the infirmary, of which disease there was
none before or since. Constant experience seems to show that the localities affected by true
Chicken-pox are those that suffer most from Small-pox.