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not had so much need to ask for the kindly assistance of the Ranyard
nurses who helped us in the previous year.
The notifications of polio-myelitis were six more and those of
cerebro-spinal meningitis three more than last year.
Two cases of the latter were notified from North Peckham and
one each from Dulwich and North Camberwell. There was also a
notification from South Peckham, but this after wards turned out to
be tuberculous in its nature.
The deaths and notifications from puerperal fever, although both
higher than last year, seemed to indicate insolated attacks, and we
had no series of cases which would infer a conveyance of infection
from one woman to another. Whether the attendants were midwives
or not, they were required to call at the Town Hall, and any
necessary disinfection was there and then carried out.
Erysipelas caused 5 fewer deaths than in 1911, and the notifictions
were 218; but from the other forms of septic disease there were
pleurisy showed a slight diminution over last year, but in the face of
the prevailing opinion it is a moot point whether they should not be
classified under the heading of tuberculosis. In so many of the
cases of phthisis that I have enquired into, and especially among
men, they have ascribed the beginning of their illness to an attack
of pleurisy, often from which they have recovered more or less
completely before the symptoms have appeared of the subsequent
disease.
The deaths from diarrhoea among persons of all ages are in line
with those of infants under one year, there being a very great
diminution at all the different age periods.
The fatal forms of alcoholism certified as such are almost the
same as last year, but as some of its effects are to be found in
many other diseases it is not possible to draw any conclusions. One,
however, of its frequent results, cirrhosis of the liver, certainly does
show a diminution from 1911.
Cancer, including the other forms of malignant disease, shows a
very decided increase over the previous year, in which 262 deaths
were reported compared with 220 in 1910.