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deaths certified as broncho-pneumonia are usually
classified under the latter heading. In addition to
these nearly all those certified as from Measles and
Whooping Cough were actually due to some pulmonary
complication. Cleanliness, careful nursing, and
avoidance of chill should reduce the mortality from
all kinds of pulmonary diseases.
4. Wasting diseases caused 85 deaths, and though
only two certificates gave "want of breast milk" as the
cause of death, yet I have no doubt that this privation
was responsible for much of the mortality from this
class of disease. In no instance does rickets alone
figure in the death certificate, though in several of the
pulmonary deaths this disease was stated to be a
contributory cause, breast fed babies rarely suffer from
rickets, it is almost invariably due to artificial feeding.
5. To convulsions and non-tuberculous meningitis
were due 43 deaths; some of the meningitis cases were
probably tubercular in origin though undiagnosed as
such; and the deaths from convulsions were in many
instances due to indigestible food.
6. Tubercular deaths numbered 42; of these tubercular
meningitis was responsible for eleven, tabes
mesenterica for sixteen, and other forms of tubercular
disease for fifteen; the mesenteric cases may have
been infected from the milk of diseased cows, but most
of the others were probably cases of inherited tuberculosis.
7. Forty-one deaths were caused by suffocation
or over-laying, all due to parental carelessness.