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42
Infectious and other Zymotic 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 for the year 1911 arc on the whole
very satisfactory though the death-rate from these diseases is
slightly higher than the rate for 1910, which was the lowest zymotic
death-rate previously recorded in the Old Parish or
Borough of Battersea. The higher zymotic death-rate for 1911
is accounted for by the severe and fatal epidemic of measles which
was prevalent during the earlier months of the year and by the
high mortality from epidemic diarrhoea and enteritis among
infants during the remarkably hot and prolonged summer.
In the Borough of Battersea during 1911 there were registered
from the principal zymotic diseases 331 deaths, giving a corrected
zymotic death-rate of 1.97 per 1,000, the corrected death-rate for
the County of London being 2.2, varying in the different Metropolitan
Boroughs from 0.7 in Hampstead to 4.0 in Poplar. The
zymotic death-rate varies considerably for the three sub-districts
into which for registration purposes the Borough is divided. Thus
in the North-West districts the rate was 3.03; in East Battersea
the rate was 2.19 while in South-West Battersea the rate was only
0.59 per 1,000. This is in accordance with the rule that generally
speaking the highest incidence and mortality from zymotic disease
will be found in the less sanitary areas of the Borough, and is
accounted for by the crowding and absence of facilities for home
isolation in the two first-named districts as compared with the
latter in which the standard of living is, on the whole, much
superior.
Similar conclusions are to be drawn from a comparison of
the death-rates from the chief zymotic diseases in the different
wards of the Borough as shown in the Table on page 43.
The number of deaths registered from the chief zymotic
diseases during 1911 was 122 (i.e. 36.8 per cent), in excess of that
for 1910, but was 20 fewer than the average for the ten years
1901-10.
The following Table gives the death-rate from each of the
chief zymotic diseases compared with the mean death-rate for the
decennium 1901-10, the gain or loss in each case being also shown:—