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52
had bean closed, upon proceedings taken by the Sanitary
Committee, in 1895. The symptoms of the illness were suspicious,
but obscure, and a positive diagnosis of typhus was
not made until one of the nurses who had been in attendance
upon the sufferer fell ill. This nurse was removed to hospital
and subsequently a second nurse, both of whom had unmistakable
typhus. Happily all three cases did well. The drain
of the house in Kenley-street was found to be defective.
Proceedings were taken against the keeper of the registered
house for permitting the illegal occupation of the underground
room where the disease is believed to have originated.
DIARRHCEA.
Diarrhoea was the cause of 112 deaths as compared with
118, 61, and 125, in the preceeding three years successively:
100 in the Town sub-district and 12 in Brompton. These
deaths were irrespective of the considerable number of deaths of
infants registered as due to gastro-enteritis, and which are classified
to enteritis. Seventy-six of the deaths were of infants under
one year of age. In the report for 1897 (pp. 42-45) I dealt at
some length with the question of infantile diarrhoea, and have
now nothing to add to the remarks on causation, &c., therein
set out.
The deaths from diarrhoea in London, as a whole, were
4,376, and 1,363 above the corrected decennial average (3,013).
The Registrar-General states that the diarrhceal death-rate
(0'97 per 1,000 living) was the highest recorded in any year
since 1886, and considerably in excess of the average rate in
the preceding ten years, viz., 0-67 per l-000.