Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
Report on vital and sanitary statistics of the Parish of Lambeth during the year 1895...
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CLASS I.—ZYMOTIC DISEASES.
Principal Zymotic Diseases.
The principal Zymotic diseases are seven in number,
viz., smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping
cough, "fever" (including typhus, typhoid or enteric, and
simple or continued), and diarrhoea; and the zymotic deathrate
is made up from the total deaths from these diseases.
As a test of the sanitary condition of a Community, the
zymotic death-rate is of approximate value.
In Lambeth during 1895 there were registered 1,118
deaths from the seven zymotic diseases, and of these 193
were strangers, 874 parishioners who died within the
Parish, and 51 parishioners who died without the Parish.
Subtracting the strangers, and adding on the parishioners
who died without the Parish, there is a corrected total
of 732, giving a zymotic death-rate per 1,000 inhabitants
of 2.6, the corrected rate for London being 2.6, varying
in the various Metropolitan Districts as shewn on page 5.
The zymotic death-rates (corrected) for the different
Registration Sub-Districts of Lambeth vary also, as shewn in
Table D, which, in addition, gives the death-rates and birthrates
for comparison. The zymotic death-rate (average) for
the Inner Districts is, we have seen, 4.57, and for the Outer,
1.77—a difference explainable partly from the fact of the
over-crowding and the absence of proper means of home
isolation in the former, as compared with the latter,
Districts. (See p. 18).
During the year 1895, under the Notification Clauses of
the Public Health (London) Act, 1891, 2,685 cases of
infectious diseases have been reported, and of this number
only 816 (i.e., 30.4%), were removed to the Hospitals of
the Asylums Board, or to other Hospitals, and 1,869 (i.e.,
69.6%), remained under treatment at their own homes.