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REPORT
on the
SANITARY CONDITION OP SAINT MARY, ISLINGTON,
FOR OCTOBER, 1859.
No. XXXI.
The Table of Mortality for the month of October bears much resemblance to
that for October of last year. It is especially remarkable in presenting the
same total of registered deaths, 182, and nearly the same total for scarlet
fever, which at this time last year was, as it is now, the prevailing zymotic
malady. The fact that scarlet fever was increasing in the parish, at the close
of last month, would of course lead to the expectation that the 20 deaths in
the five weeks of September would be greatly exceeded in October. The
deaths registered during the last four weeks have been 29 (about half as many
again). Last year, in October, it was the Eastern sub-district which principally
suffered from this disease. This year, the proportion of deaths in the two
sub-districts has been just reversed. The neighbourhoods visited most
severely were indicated in my last report. By obtaining a free distribution of
my " Directions for Preventing the spread of Infectious Diseases" in the
infected neighbourhoods, I have endeavoured to impress the parents of the
children attacked, with the importance of keeping the healthy apart from the
sick, and of availing themselves of the advantages which the roomy and wellventilated
Fever Hospital affords for successful treatment over their own
close and crowded dwellings. Of all the infectious diseases to which childhood
is liable, scarlet fever is that against which the most careful precautions are
necessary, in as much as, while it is more readily communicated than any
other, it is by far the most fatal in its attacks. It should be understood, not
only by the poor, but by the heads of every family in the parish, that the infection
is most insidious, that it lurks even in clothing and in bedding, and that
the use of them, unpurified, after they have been put away for many months,
has been, in some instances, the origin of a renewed outbreak. Where the
disease occurs in a house, in which it can be so arranged, the sick individual