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38
Judging from the deaths from Consumption, which numbered 47,
there must have been some 200 sufferers from the disease in the
Borough during the year, and of those only 38 were notified under
the voluntary system.
In connection with the compulsory notification of Consumption,
a very good compromise between those who oppose it and those who
favour it has been suggested, namely, that such notification should
be compulsory at first only with regard to cases coming under the
Poor Law Medical Officers or attending Public Institutions. In this
way we should learn the number and distribution of those cases of
Consumption which were most dangerous to the community, and thus
extend the application of the necessary precautionary measures.
In the year 1906, the mortality caused by Pulmonary Tuberculosis
in the Metropolis was equal to a rate of 1.44 per thousand
persons living. It was, therefore, higher than the average rate for
England and Wales by 0.29 per thousand. It will be seen that the
rate for the Borough of Stoke Newington compared very favourably
with that figure. From the Report for that year of the Medical
Officer of Health of the Administrative County of London, one learns
that, after making due allowance for age differences among the living,
the mortality from Pulmonary Tuberculosis varies from a rate of
1.1 per thousand in the least overcrowded sanitary areas to precisely
double that figure where the overcrowding exists to 27 per cent.
The views of Professor Karl Pearson will, I believe, gain general
acceptance amongst medical officers of health:
"A theory of infection," he writes," does not account for the
facts. I am inclined to think that the risks run, especially under
urban conditions, are, for tuberculosis as for a number of other
infectious diseases, so great that the constitution or diathesis means
almost everything for the individual whose life cannot be spent in
self-protection. I feel fairly certain that for the artizan class the