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they are transferred, if severely ill, to the former category, or into the third class
of patients, who are treated at their own homes. Among these last there is a proportion
of deaths varying from about eight to twelve per cent.
In the Table for the present year, on the preceding page, the numbers that
express the total cases under treatment, are found to differ very little from those
of 1859. Fewer persons were treated as out-patients, and more were visited at
their own houses than in the previous year, the nature of the prevailing diseases
furnishing the reason for this fact. It will be seen that the mortality of persons
treated in the parish infirmary was greater than in 1859, on an almost identical
number admitted. The incurable diseases here received were hastened to a fatal
termination by the inclemency of the seasons in 1860.
The remarkable fall in diarrhoea, and the rise in bronchitis and consumption
from the preceding year, are among the more striking of the facts that this
Table furnishes, in corroboration of the conclusions that have been drawn from
the death register. The number of cases of small-pox under treatment,
and the subsidence of the disease as the year advanced, may be here seen; the
vaccination-returns that have chief interest in connexion with the epidemic, will
be found in the appended extract (VIII.)
A much large number of persons received medical relief at the Bloomsbury
Dispensary, in 1860, than in any recent year. The new patients of the past
three years have numbered 2,618, 3,214, and in 1860, 4,293. Deductions from
these figures can have little regard to the health of the year, but can be relied on
to show that the charity is steadily increasing its usefulness. The number in
each quarter, distinguishing those who were visited at home and noting the
deaths which occurred, is seen in the following scheme:—

Chapter VII.— On the Sanitary Work of 1860.
It now remains to consider what the means have been by which the improvement
in the health of St. Giles's has been maintained in 1860. How the
year opened with an epidemic, and what were the means that succeeded in subduing
its virulence, have been so fully considered in a previous Report, that I
need not here do more than refer to Dr. Seaton's account of the matter. He
shows clearly that it was to the sanitary work done that the subsidence of smallpox
is to be ascribed.
Between March 1860 and March 1861, the year for which sanitary improvements
are to be reported, the health of the district has presented few occasions