View report page

fever; the same relative mortality is observed in the
third month (December) of the quarter. During this
quarter scarlet fever attained its maximum of destruction,
but during each successive week gave way before
the advancing force of small pox, which now began to
assert its supremacy in power for destroying human
life, and scarlet fever was at this critical period apparently
worsted in the contest, and rapidly retired
before its apparently stronger and more virulent foe;
this is sharply and forcibly proved by reference to the
figures in the Table.
The relative mortality of the two diseases was now
reversed, and so continued during the two following
quarters, when small pox attained its maximum and
scarlet fever its minimum of fatality. During the next
quarter small pox considerably declined, while scarlet
fever remained stationary at its reduced mortality.
During this last quarter, it will be seen that the scarlet
fever poison in the Metropolis was in its feeblest phase,
and in our own Hamlet was absolutely exhausted, not
a single death having occurred during the quarter.
A closer analysis of the figures would further support
these points : for instance, in May, 1871, when the
greatest number of deaths from small pox occurred in
Mile End, there was not, for the first time, a single
death from small pox.
These facts cannot fail to be at lease interesting and
even suggestive of some conditions or laws by which the
elements of the two diseases are modified, controlled, or
neutralized, or to an antithesis in the nature and constitution
of the disease germs, so that under varied propitious
conditions, one is destructive and inimical to the
existence of the other; on the other hand, these remarkable
results may be accounted for by an identity in the
nature of the materies morbi of the two diseases, which