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from some more or less deadly disease. This will be apparent
from the figures of the complications, namely:—
Lobar pneumonia 92
Broncho-pneumonia 100
Pneumonia 126
Influenza 18
Heart Diseases 19
Pulmonary Tuberculosis 8
Bronchitis 41
Other Complications 24
428
Take, for instance, the question of heart diseases, pulmonary
tuberculosis, and a certain number under the designation
of "other complications," which include a few cases
of cancer, and it is evident that many patients'were suffering
from these diseases before they were attacked by influenza,
and that many of those diseases would have ended their
lives, the end merely being hastened by influenza.
A look at the accompanying charts will give a very good
idea of the behaviour of influenza in Bermondsey during
1918. On chart No. 1 the weekly number of deaths is shown,
and you will see that we were practically free from the
disease until the first week in July, when the deaths ran up
to 11 in one week. By the second week in August we were
quite free from influenza deaths until the second week in
October, when one death was reported, and during the following
weeks the epidemic spread in the most extraordinary
manner, so that by the third week in November the deaths
from this disease totalled 79. It died down practically as
rapidly as it rose, so that it had completely disappeared by
the fourth week in December.
It is difficult to say why the deaths of females number so
many more than the males, but it is probably due to the
fact that a good deal of the nursing was done by the women
of the household, so that in this way they were more exposed