View report page

13
Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health—1860.
one and another have been taken away, to the sore and irreparable loss of their families.
Nature never pardons. Obey and it is well: disobey and reap the bitter consequences.

There has been an increase of deaths from measles to the number of 32 over the
preceding year; and 22 of hooping-cough. The latter disease has been very prevalent of
late. The deaths from diarrhoea have undergone a remarkable decrease from the last and
previous years, falling from 69 deaths in the year ending March 1860, to 28 in the present.
The causes of this decrease have been the coldness of the stimmer of 1860, and the great
quantity of rain which fell, and washed away all impurities out of the atmosphere from off
the roads, and out of the sewers. The opposite state of the weather invariably proves favourable
to abdominal diseases. During the cholera epidemic in 1832, the rain fall was one
fourth less than the average: and in 1849 and 1854 there was a total absence of rain during
its prevalence.