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22
In addition to what can be done by the Local Authority to reduce
the largely preventable mortality among children from this and other
causes by a strict attention to all the details of sanitary administration
upon which the healthiness of a district depends, there is a large field
for private individual effort to combat the ignorance and carelessness
to which so many of the deaths of young children are due, and much
good could probably be accomplished by charitable organizations
having specially in view the prevention of infant mortality.
Influenza.
For the fourth successive year Influenza has shown itself in London.
During the first nine months of the year it was the cause of 790 deaths
in London, and in the middle of November there was a marked extension
of the disease the fatal cases rising from 22 in the second week of
November to 164 in the second week of December, and it seemed as if
there were to be another serious epidemic.
The spread of the disease, however, then became checked, and
there has been a continuous diminution in the mortality since. In
Fulham the deaths recorded were 39, 19 of which occurred during the
last month of the year.
In 1892 59 deaths were attributed to Influenza, and in 1891, 47.
The Vestry distributed a circular among the householders of the
parish calling attention to the infectiveness of the disease and the
precautions advisable to prevent its spread and stating that the
necessary disinfection of rooms, clothing, etc., would be undertaken
free of cost.
Other Miasmatic Diseases
One death was attributed to Chicken-pox, and one to Rotheln or
German Measles.
Venereal Diseases.
To these diseases were attributed 17 deaths, 15 being from
Syphilis, the disease in 13 cases being congenital.