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45
The following statement concerning the occurrence of important
diseases in the District during the year, I offer as a small contribution
on the conditions necessary for improving the health of the district.
Small-Pox, like other epidemic diseases, is of periodical recurrence.
The years when small-pox was epidemic in London were 1838, 1844,
1848, 1852, 1859, 1863, 1867, and 1871. It made its reappearance
in the Metropolis as an epidemic in 1876.
In the month of January, both Small-Pox Hospitals belonging to the
Asylum District Board were empty. By the end of May the patients
were 42. During the year these numbers steadily increased; and in the
last two weeks of December there were 823 patients in those hospitals.
The Registrar-General says the mortality in the present epidemic,
has been higher than in the preceding one.—''During the London
small-pox epidemic in 1870-1-2, 14,808 cases were treated in the
Metropolitan Asylum Hospitals, with a mortality equal to 18.7 per
cent. During 1876, the number of completed cases treated in the
same hospitals was 1,377, and the 338 deaths (46 per cent. of all the
small-pox deaths in London) were equal to a mortality of 24.5 per cent."

Making a total of 18 cases, of which 4 were fatal for the whole year.
The majority of the patients were sent to the Hospitals of the Metropolitan
Asylum District Board. The rooms, bedding, and clothing of the
patients were disinfected as soon as they were removed. The Sanitary Inspectors
incur considerable risk in the performance of this duty, and In
spector Hartythus caught the disease, which laid him up for several weeks.
The Guardians issued handbills urging the necessity of revaccination
of persons above 15 years of age.