View report page

118
to children, viz., Tabes Mesenterica (col. 1), Tubercular Meningitis
and Hydrocephalus (col. 2). The reduction in the number
of deaths from Phthisis (consumption or decline) is not so considerable,
and there is a not inconsiderable increase, after
allowance for increase of population, in the deaths from" Other
Forms of Tuberculosis, Scrofula" (col. 4). The corrected increase
under this head, 51 deaths, admits of a probable
explanation on the assumption of greater accuracy in
diagnosis; deaths which formerly would have been inserted
in columns 1 and 2, now being classified to the diseases
included in column 4. Be this as it may, the fact remains
of a large reduction in mortality amongst infants and
young children in this parish*, which may have been
due in part to improvement in the quality of the milk
supply, which for many years has come almost exclusively
from country districts; whereas a quarter of a century
ago a not inconsiderable amount was produced, under conditions
more or less unfavourable, in London itself. There is
reason for believing, moreover, that the practice of boiling
milk—an effectual means of destroying the bacillus—is now
more general than formerly.
In 1898, the deaths from tubercular diseases in Kensington
were 333, and particulars of these deaths, showing the
number from each of the diseases, and at different ageperiods,
in the parish, as a whole, and in the sub-districts,
are set out in the table at page 129. Consumption, the
leading disease in the group, was the cause of 217 deaths
(12.6 per 10,000 of the population): 71 of the deaths took
place at the parish infirmary. These deaths, which comprised
118 of males and 99 of females, were connected with the
several sanitary districts as shown in the subjoined table:
*Our local experience appears to be at variance with the general experience,
for Sir William Broadbent stated, at the Marlborough House meeting, that "tabes
mesenterica, the disease of the bowel in children traceable to tubercle conveyed
in milk, has increased." British Medical Journal, Dec. 24, 1898.