View report page

38
DIPHTHERIA.
Cases of diphtheria (215) and membranous croup (7) to
the aggregate number of 222, were notified, as compared with
365, 371, and 332, in the preceding three years successively :
viz., 131 in North Kensington and 91 in South Kensington.
The deaths registered were 26 (as compared with 89, 72, and
82, in the preceding three years respectively), being 45 below
the corrected decennial average (71): 23 of them belong to
the Town sub-district, and 3 to Brompton ; 18 to North Kensington
and 8 to South Kensington. Twenty-one of the
deaths took place at hospitals, to which 164 cases were
removed. The case-mortality was 11.7 per cent., and about
the lowest on record. So few deaths from this disease as in
1898 had not been registered in any year since 1885, the
nearest approach to it being 35 deaths in 1890, and 28 deaths
in 1891.
In London, as a whole, the deaths were 1,772, and 403
below the corrected decennial average (2,175), as compared
with 2,316, 2,683, and 2,261, in the preceding three years respectively.
Combining croup with diphtheria, the deaths were
1,829, and 649 below the corrected decennial average. In 1888
494 deaths were registered from croup : in 1898 only 57.
The notifications of diphtheria were 11,561, as compared
with 10,772, 13,361, and 12,811, in the preceding three years
successively. The cases of diphtheria admitted to hospitals
are stated by the Registrar-General to have been 6,615, and
the deaths in hospitals 996, or 15.1 per cent. The death-rate
from diphtheria per 1,000 persons living, during the ten years
1889-98 (after distribution of deaths in public institutions) in
London and Kensington was as follows :—
1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898
London ... 0.38 0.33 0.32 0.44 0.75 0.61 0.52 0.59 0.50 0.39
Kensington ... 0.67 0.20 0.17 0.20 0.49 0.46 0.53 0.40 0.47 0.15