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9
that Small Pox has ceased to be fatal, if not to be extinct,
in Mile End. Should it, however, prove otherwise, in addition
to careful provision of ventilation, and an early isolation
of cases as they occur, the evil would be best met by a
general inquiry, with a view to trace out persons who
remained unvaccinated, and by an explanation of the provisions
of 16th and 17th Victoria, cap. 100, sec. 2, those
persons would doubtless see, in default of successful persuasion,
the necessity of complying with the statute.
The mortality from Diseases of the Chest I take to be,
with an allowance by way of exception, rather an indication
of prosperity and robustness of constitution, or their reverses,
than of conditions obedient to the control of sanitary measures.
Few persons who have the means to prevent, will
allow themselves to suffer materially from the effects of
exposure to inclement or changeable weather, without using
personal and domestic precautions to obviate their consequences;
so that an increase of mortality from variation of
temperature is not to be attributed essentially to an absence
of that which constitutes a healthy condition of locality.
Deaths among children of a tender age, and from Pulmonary
Consumption, are the principal if not the sole exceptions.
The deaths from lung diseases in persons above three years
of age, in the period to which this Report relates, were 269;
that is, 147 from Consumption, and 122 from catarrhal and
inflammatory diseases of the air passages, bronchitis, &c.
The deaths from these combined causes were, in the previous
year, 334.
Five deaths from cholera appear in the Table,—none
having been recorded in the year 1857.
Diarrhoea was fatal in 30 cases (this number is exclusive
of children under three years of age); Measles in 40 instances;
Whooping Cough in 70; Scarlatina in 88.