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108
Clerkenwell 91 lives. With only two exceptions, the deaths
were those of children under 5 years of age. Occasional cases
of diarrhœa occur at all seasons of the year from errors of diet
and other causes, but the diarrhoea associated with high
temperatures—epidemic summer diarrhœa as it is called—is of
a different character. It is believed to be due to a microorganism
which exists in the superficial layers of soil containing
food suitable for it, that is, soil polluted by decomposing organic
matter, either animal or vegetable. Under certain circumstances
it has the power of leaving the soil to become borne
by the air It thus gains access to food, and through the
medium of food, as a rule, it is introduced into the human
system, originating the special disease. It has been demonstrated
that the particular circumstance which sets up this train
of events is a high temperature, not in the air itself, but in the
superficial layers of the soil. The summer rise in the diarrhœa
death rate does not begin till the average weekly temperature
of the thermometer, suspended in an iron tube 4 feet deep in
the earth, has reached 56° F., no matter how high the temperature
of the air may have been previously.
Bearing in mind that though high earth temperatures follow
high air temperatures they take place a week or more later in
point of time, and also that death only occurs after a longer or
shorter period of disease, the following table giving the diarrhœa
deaths in Clerkenwell for each week, side by side with the
average temperature of the air for the same week, shows clearly
the relationship existing between high temperatures of the boil
and epidemic summer diarrhoea:—
week mean deaths
ending. temp. from
diarrhœa.
Jan. 4'th- 45.8-0
„ 11th- 37.2-0
„ 18th- 43-0
„ 25th-39.5-0
week mean deaths
ending. temp. from
diarrhœa.
July 4th-61.3-6
„ 11th-68.8-6
„ 18th-64.9-12
„ 25th-67.5- 20