London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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Lambeth 1896

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Lambeth, The Vestry of the Parish of]

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27
CLASS I—ZYMOTIC DISEASES.
Principal Zymotic Diseases.
The principal Zymotic diseases are seven in number,
viz., smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping
cough, "fever'' (including typhus, typhoid or enteric, and
simple or continued), and diarrhœa; and the zymotic deathrate
is made up from the total deaths from these diseases.
As a test of the sanitary condition of a Community, the
zymotic death-rate is of approximate value.
In Lambeth during 1896 there were registered 819 deaths
from the seven zymotic diseases, and of these 203 were
strangers belonging to other parishes, and 616 parishioners
who died within the Parish. 92 Parishioners, however,
died without the Parish. Subtracting the strangers and
adding on the parishioners who died without the Parish,
there is a corrected total of 708, giving a zymotic corrected
death-rate of 2 4 per 1000 inhabitants, the corrected rate
for London being 31, varying in the various Metropolitan
Districts, as shown on page 6. The zymotic death-rates
(corrected) for the different Registration Sub-districts of
Lambeth vary also, as shown in Table D, which in addition
gives the death-rates and birth-rates for comparison. The
zymotic death-rate (average) for the Inner Districts is, we
have seen, 3.3, and for the Outer, 2.04—a difference explainable
(as before) from the overcrowding and absence of
proper means of home isolation and nursing in the former,
as compared with the latter, Districts.
During the year 1896, under the Notification Clauses of
the Public Health (London) Act, 1891, 2801 cases of
Infectious Diseases have been reported, and of this number
1206, i.e , 43 per cent. were removed to the Hospitals of the