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Class II.—Parasitic Diseases.
Includes Thrush and Other Vegetable Parasitic Diseases, from
which there were four deaths ; and Worms, Hydatids, and Other
Animal Parasitic Diseases, there having been no deaths from
any of these causes.
Class III.—Dietetic Diseases
Were the causes of 24 deaths, seventeen of them in the Town
sub-district. To Want of Breast Milk, Starvation, three
deaths were classified ; to Scurvy, none. Delirium Tremens
was the cause of three deaths, against 6, 4, and 7, in the preceding
three years respectively; Chronic Alcoholism of 18 deaths,
against 8, 13, and 7. Of these 21 deaths, 15 occurred in the
Town sub-district. It is scarcely necessary, perhaps, to remark
that if all the deaths due, directly or indirectly, to the immoderate
use of intoxicating liquors could be ascertained,
" Alcoholism " would occupy a more prominent position
in the "Bills of Mortality" ; but many deaths due to the
misuse of alcohol get certified, and therefore are classified,
to visceral and degenerative diseases caused or aggravated
by drink. Man's ingenuity in the discovery of alcohol, it
may truly be said, is accountable for a large part of the
misery of his race. "The drink" is a fruitful parent of vice
and crime, as well as being the cause of much bodily sickness,
mental trouble, moral degradation, ruin, and of many
premature deaths: it fills our prisons and workhouses, our
asylums and hospitals, our cemeteries—and our National
Exchequer !
Class IV.—Constitutional Diseases.
This important Class comprises the causes of 504 deaths
(=17'3 per cent. of total deaths), including 80 of children
under the age of five years : 391 of the deaths were registered
in the Town sub-district, and 113 in Brompton.