London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972
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Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
Islington 1912
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Islington, Metropolitan Borough of]
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it meant ; but none of them had realised what an awful thing is death
when seen in the aggregate. The numbers viewed in this way appalled one,
and I know so far as I am concerned that their effect on me has been that
whenever I speak or write of large numbers of deaths, the Victoria Hall disaster
recurs to my mind, and the meaning of the record of those preventable deaths
comes h me to me with full weight
I want you to think of those 600 deaths from tuberculosis, which occur
annually in our borough, as if the dead were actually laid out before you in a
great hall; and if you do, believe me you will not only be as anxious to prevent
them, as I have been for years, but also so impatient that you will hardly brook
delay in coming to the timely succour of those unfortunate patients who,
anxious for the future of their wives, their husbands, their children or themselves,
suffer " a month's grief in a day—a year's in twelve."
An analysis of the mortality returns provides this information, which is as follows:—
| Phthisis (including tuberculosis of larynx) | 4,658 |
| Abdominal tuberculosis | 383 |
| Tuberculous meningitis | 726 |
| Generalized tuberculosis | 256 |
| Other forms of tuberculosis | 131 |
| 6,154 |