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43
Infectious and other Diseases.
Zymotic Diseases.
The principal zymotic diseases are seven in number, viz. :
small-pox, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria (including membranous
croup), whooping-cough, "fever" (including typhus,
enteric or typhoid, and simple or continued), and diarrhoea. The
zymotic death rate may be accepted, within certain limits, as an
index of the sanitary condition of a community, and the statistics
for the Borough of Battersea in 1908 will be found to show a
highly satisfactory record as compared with those of former years.
In the Borough of Battersea during 1908 there were registered
from the principal zymotic diseases 228 deaths, giving a
corrected zymotic death rate of 1.23 per 1,000, the corrected rate
for the County of London being 1.35, varying in the different
Metropolitan Boroughs from 0.4 in Hampstead to 2.5 in Stepney.
The zymotic death rates vary considerably for the three
sub-districts, into which, for registration purposes, the Borough
is divided. Thus, in the North-West district, the rate was 1.84,
in the East District 1.37, while in South-West the rate was only
.55 per 1,000. As in past years, North-West Battersea shows
the highest, South-West Battersea the lowest, a difference explainable
from the crowding and absence of home isolation and
nursing in North-West and East Battersea as compared with the
latter district, in which the housing accommodation and general
standard of comfort of the inhabitants is, on the whole, much
superior.