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under the most insanitary conditions of residence was less
than that of hand-fed children under good circumstances. It
might, perhaps, be urged that the children of those mothers
who were unable to nurse their offspring were not probably of
the most robust kind, and therefore more liable to disease and
death, but the difference appears to me to be too great to be
explained in this way, and it would therefore seem evident
that the cause of diarrhœa is in great measure associated with
contamination of the milk which is the chief article of diet
among infants. Anyhow, last year I recommended that a still
further use should be made in what had been inaugurated in
previous years—the practice of watering the streets and washing
out the gullies with a weak solution of permanganate of
potash. I was strengthened in this recommendation by a
report from the Bacteriologist on the same subject.
Enteric fever caused 33 deaths, compared with 32 in
1899; of these 19 were of persons who had been removed to
hospital. One death occurred in a resident of Dulwich.
Camberwell, Peckham and St. George's have been respectively
credited with 9, 10 and 11, while in two instances the deaths
were of persons whose previous address we have been unable
to ascertain. The notifications amounted to 186, of which the
majority came from Camberwell. Inquiries were made into the
history of each of these cases, but so far as we were able to
ascertain there was no one factor especially at work. It was
supposed in some parts of London that the disease had been
spread by means of infected linen through the agency of
mangling. In only one case in Camberwell were we able to
Snd that linen from a house attacked by this disease was washed
it a laundry where another case of enteric subsequently occurred.
The death rate per 1000 from this disease is below that
of London as a whole, and considerably under the rate of most
of the South London parishes, a matter of congratulation, as
this disease may be considered as "everywhere an index of the
sanitary intelligence of a community." (Osler.)
Scarlet fever caused 19 deaths in 1899, and 11 in 1900;
all these last occurred in persons who had been removed from
their homes for treatment in one or other of the infectious
disease hospitals. Six deaths were of inhabitants of Camberwell,
4 came from Peckham, and 1 from St. George's. The