View report page

9
Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health—1894.
I have called the above zymotic diseases "preventable," because I regard all
communicable disease, broadly speaking, as coming under that heading. Diarrhoea
is a symptom rather than a disease, and, although not usually communicated from
one person to another, it may be regarded as the almost invariable result of bad
environment. At the same time, it must be clearly understood that a vast amount
of preventable disease, such as that due to alcoholism, is not zymotic in the ordinary
sense of the term—that is to say, disease communicable from the sick to the
healthy.
The corrected death-rate in St. George's, Southwark, from the seven principal
zymotic diseases was 4.0 per 1,000 in 1894, as against 2.6 per 1,000 in the whole of
London for the same period, and 2.4 in the 33 great towns of England and Wales.
As in the calculation of the general death-rate, so with the zymotic death-rate,
the deaths of non-parishioners occurring within the district have been excluded,
whilst on the other hand the deaths of parishioners in public institutions outside the
parish have been included. Unless a proper distribution of these deaths be made,
especially of those from zymotic diseases, no really trustworthy data can be secured
upon which to calculate the rates of mortality.
In the forty-three sanitary areas of the metropolis the zymotic death-rates ranged
from 0.9 in Stoke Newington, 1.1 in the City of London, 1.4 in St. George's, Hanover
Square, and in Hampstead, 1.7 in Lee, 1.8 in Wandsworth, and 1.9 in Lewisham, to
4.0 in St. George's, Southwark, 4.1 in Mile End Old Town, 4.3 in Limehouse, and
5.0 in St. George's in the East.