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55
FEVER.
There was no death from Typhus or from Simple Continued
Fever in 1893. Enteric Fever was the cause of 17 deaths,
compared with 15, 24, and 15, in the preceding three
years respectively, the corrected decennial average being
19. Fourteen of the deaths belong to the Town sub-district
(seven of them having taken place in hospitals to which
39 cases were removed) and three to the Brompton
sub-district. Ninety-seven cases were notified, 52 in North
Kensington and 45 in South Kensington, compared with
84, 95, and 58, in the preceding three years.
Fever in London.—There were 5 deaths from typhus in
London and 21 from simple and ill-defined fever, the decennial
averages being 21 and 58 respectively. The deaths from
enteric fever were 693 (257 more than in 1892) and 10 above
the corrected decennial average.
DIARRHŒA.
Diarrhoea was the cause of 98 deaths (11 above the
corrected decennial average) 82 in the Town sub-district, and
10 in Brompton. Eighty-nine of the deaths were of children
under five, including 76 under one year. The deaths from
diarrhceal diseases in London generally, were 3,446 (356
above the corrected decennial average) including 2,567 of
infants in the first year of life, and 511 of children between
one and five. The question why diarrhoea is so prevalent,
and so fatal, to infants, in hot summers, has been long
under consideration by the medical department of the
Local Government Board. A " provisional or working
hypothesis" has been formulated, which assumes the
existence of a form of germ-life in the earth—especially
where this is sewage-tainted or otherwise polluted—which
germ, developing activity when a certain temperature is
attained, and rising into the air, finds admission with food
into the system, and, multiplying there, generates a poison
which is the immediate cause of the disease.