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80
REPORT
ON THE
SANITARY CONDITION OF ST. MAM, ISLINGTON,
FOR SEPTEMBER, 1866.
No. CXIII.
Three hundred and forty-eight deaths were registered during the five
weeks ending September 29th. The mean mortality for the corresponding
weeks of ten previous years, corrected for increased population, is 335,
so that our mortality has amounted to 13 above the average.
Small-pox, scarlet fever, and hooping cough have all been prevailing
to a greater extent than during August, and the mortality from hooping
cough has been above the average of the month. Fever has also
been more fatal, and especially it is to be observed that we have had
more cases of typhus than is customary in this parish, where this form
of fever is not very commonly met with. The mortality from diseases
of the nervous system, and especially from apoplexy, has been also
unusually high, and the deaths of young infants from what are termed
in the certificates of death " debility," " marasmus," "atrophy," &c.,
have been more numerous than usual.
Necessarily my principal anxiety has been in connection with the
epidemic of cholera, the control of which has taxed to the utmost all
the resources at my disposal. It is not to be supposed that the labour
which it involves is at all to be measured by the number of cases,
which has hitherto been much smaller than in former epidemics. The
Diseases Prevention Committee have very judiciously largely increased
my staff of inspectors, and sanitary work is going on very actively
in all parts of the parish; besides which, they have recently, at
my request, furnished me with a body of men whom I employ at
the disinfection of closets and drains wherever cholera shows itself, and
also in places where from the character of the population it is