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40
the preceding three years respectively. The notifications of
puerperal fever were 16 in number. Hearing in mind the
disastrous series of cases of this disease on which I reported
in 1883, when a verdict of manslaughter was returned by a
coroner's jury against a midwife, under circumstances set out
in the fourth and sixth reports for that year, I have ever since
felt it to be my duty to warn nurses, and all other women
concerned with these painful cases, of the responsibility they
incur by attending other parturient women until after a period
of three or four weeks, and disinfection of their persons,
clothing, &c. This course was adopted in respect of the cases
notified in 1897 with satisfactory results, there having been no
spread of the disease.
Class II.—Parasitic Diseases.
The deaths from the diseases in this Order were 2, from
Thrush, one of them of an infant under one year of age.
Class III.—Dietetic Diseases.
The deaths from the diseases in this Order were 15;9 of
them in the Town sub-district. Delirium Tremens was the
cause of four deaths, as compared with 2, 3, and 4, in the
preceding three years respectively; Chronic Alcoholism of
eleven deaths, against 8, 8, and 10. It is scarcely necessary,
perhaps, to remark that if all the deaths due, directly or
indirectly, to the immoderate use of intoxicating liquors, could
be ascertained, alcoholism would occupy a more prominent
position in the bills of mortality; but many deaths due to
the misuse of alcohol get certified, and therefore are classified,
to visceral and degenerative diseases caused or aggravated by
drink.
Class IV.—Constitutional Diseases.
This important Class comprises the causes of 554 deaths
(equal to 20.8 per cent. of total deaths), including 85 of
children under the age of five years: 445 of the deaths were
registered in the Town sub-district, and 109 in Brompton.