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4
CAUSES OF DEATH.
The causes of death of 2,642 persons are detailed in Table 1. As usual the diseases
of the zymotic class stand at the head of the list as occasioning the largest number,
and next to them stand the pulmonary and tubercular diseases.
a. Zymotic Diseases*
6. Of the 2,642 deaths 721 arose from diseases of this class. This is a per centage
of27'2. In 1856 the per centage was 23 6, and in 1857 it was 22'4. It is in the
Eastern half of the parish that the excessive zymotic mortality has prevailed. The
difference in this respect between the two sub-districts is too great to be readily explicable
on any other hypothesis than the really greater prevalence or greater fatality
of these diseases in this sub-district. The per centage in the West Sub-district was
23.8 and in the East 30.6.
7. The greatest weekly zymotic mortality, viz. 24, occurred (Table II.) in the week
which ended November 27, at the period therefore of the most unseasonable cold (See
Monthly Report, No. XX ) In the following week it reached 22. It is remarkable on
a survey of the year how little effect the excessively hot weather in June had upon
the mortality. In the week ending June 19lb, the hottest week of the year, the total
mortality did not exceed 45, and the zymotic mortality was only 8. It is true that
the zymotic deaths became more frequent in the following weeks, but they never
attained a high number.
8. The most fatal diseases of this class were Hooping Cough which occasioned 159
deaths, Scarlet Fever which occasioned 116 deaths, Measles 98, Diarrhoea 90, Fever
65, and Diphtheria and epidemic sore throat 59. All of these, with the exception of
Measles, carried off by far the largest number of persons in the East Sub-district.
Hooping Covgh has been unusually prevalent throughout the year, although subsiding
a little in the summer months. The largest monthly mortality from Hooping
Cough, viz. 27, occurred in the five weeks which succeeded the very cold weather in
November.
Scarlet Fever, which only occasioned 13 deaths during the first half of the year,
began to present an epidemic character about the end of July, and between this time
and the close of the year carried off 103 persons, of whom all but five were under 10
years of age. Its progress week by week is shown in Table II. The mortality suddenly
subsided in Islington after the cold weather of the last week in November.
The deaths from Measles were slightly in excess of previous years in the 1st, 2nd,
and 4th quarters.
Considering the excessive heat of the summer and the prolonged dry weather, it is
highly worthy of remark that Islington, in common with the rest of the Metropolis,
enjoyed a comparative immunity from the bowel complaints which we annually look
for at that season. When Cholera approached this island so closely as it did in 1857,
and when an outbreak to a limited extent actually took place in a metropolitan
suburb, we certainly did look with anxiety to the progress of events in the succeeding
summer. The result in Islington was that only 59 deaths from Diarrhoea occurred in
the quarter against 99 in 1857 and 78 in 1856.
The deaths from Fever have also been reduced in number, since they only amounted
to 65. In 1857 they were 84, and in the previous year 74. Another important and
interesting fact is that true Typhus has been almost completely absent from London.
*"Tins class comprises diseases winch have been observed to be epidemic, endemic, or contagious.
The blood is probably, in the greater number of thee, the primary seat of disease ; and they may be
considered, by hypotheses, the result of specific poisons of organic origin, either derived from without
or generated vfitbin the body."—Statistical Nosology, 1815. p. 14.