View report page

57
births, against 4.6, 3.5, and 2.5 per 1,000 in the preceding
three years respectively. The notifications of puerperal
fever were nine in number. Bearing 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 1896 with satisfactory results, there
having been no spread of the disease.
Class II.—Parasitic Diseases.
The deaths from the diseases in this Order were five, from
Thrush, four of them of infants under one year.
Class III.—Dietetic Diseases.
The deaths from the diseases in this Order were 16;
11 of them in the Town sub-district. To Want of
Breast Milk one death was classified, and to Scurvy
one. Delirium Tremens was the cause of four deaths,
against 3, 2, and 3, in the preceding three years respectively; Chronic Alcoholism of ten deaths, against 18, 8,
and 8. Of these 14 deaths 9 occurred in the Town
sub-district. 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.