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6
from these diseases were 360, and they were therefore somewhat less prevalent
in St, Giles's than elsewhere in London. This is an unusual, but not an unprecedented
circumstance. When it is remembered that diseases of this sort are
those most controllable by public sanitary arrangements, we may venture to
believe the vigilance of the district authorities has really been productive of
some fruits.
The most preventible disease, however, of all this group has been very unduly
fatal in St. Giles's. The number of deaths that would be computed to fall
on St. Giles' in the recent epidemic of small-pox is 37 or 38. The actual
number of deaths was 57. It is of particular moment to enquire concerning
the vaccination of these cases:
There were 22 fatal cases of small-pox in which no record was furnished
of the previous vaccination. Excluding these, the remaining 35 were classed
as follows:
Not vaccinated 22
Not vaccinated until they had caught small-pox 2
Vaccinated unsuccessfully 3
Wholly unprotected, therefore 27
Said to have been vaccinated 8
Of these eight deaths in persons alleged to have been vaccinated, some were
entered as occurring after "imperfect" vaccination. In other cases the
quality of the vaccination, as judged by the scars, was not stated, and even
the fact of its success was not always ascertained.
It is not enough to observe that more unvaccinated persons died of
small-pox than vaccinated persons, unless we at the same time remember the
very different numbers of the two classes of people that live among us. It
may be affirmed that 90 per cent.* of our population has been subjected to
vaccination of some degree of efficiency. That 90 per cent. of the population
lost only 8 persons by small-pox in the year, while the 27 deaths among
unvaccinated occurred in the remaining tenth of the population. A simple
calculation therefore shows that for equal numbers the unvaccinated died to
thirty times the extent of the vaccinated. In the last section of this report,
however, it will be shown that a great deal of the vaccination upon which
people rely for protection against small pox is illusory, and indeed the vaccination
was ascertained to be inefficiently done in certain of the eight deaths
that occurred from small-pox among those who believed themselves protected
by the operation.
The epidemic of small-pox began and culminated in St. Giles's at the
same time as in the metropolis taken as a whole, but its subsidence appears to
have been slower in our own district.
Scarlatina, though extensively prevalent in St. Giles' and causing no
fewer than 76 deaths, (against 70, itself a very high number, in 1862) was
yet not so fatal as our population would lead us to expect. Our quota of
deaths from this disease was 94 or 95. Typhus and other continued fevers
also were less fatal in St. Giles's than in the average metropolis, 48 deaths
from these causes being recorded instead of a quota of 54.
Diarrhoea caused twelve more deaths, than the 46 which we should have
computed to be furnished by our population. Measles, whooping cough, and
diphtheritis, were fatal in St. Giles's to exactly the satr.e extent as in the
average of London. Croup exhibited fewer deaths than its computed number,
a circumstance very exceptional on our death-register.
* ln the schools indeed, as will be seen by the 7th Section of this Report, less than
5 per cent. of children were found without marks of vaccination.