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was mainly due to deaths which are recognised, on all hands, to be,
in a measure, preventable. The excessive mortality was furnished
entirely by Summer Diarrhoea, Measles and Whooping Cough,
among the infant population; it was practically restricted to the
children of the poorer classes, and was largely due to parental
ignorance and neglect of the elementary laws of health and disease
prevention. When our system of education also concerns itself with
teaching every scholar the vital matters which are of the first
importance to the individual and the community—even to the
sacrifice of some of the purely ornamental matter that is now
taught, the sooner will every parent in the land possess the
knowledge that will help them to put into operation the essential
laws of health and the rudimentary principles of infant rearing;
and then there will come a great reduction in the infantile
mortality. The increase due to Diphtheria was also a factor
in promoting the excessive death-rate for the quarter referred
to, and I am convinced that some of the increased mortality from
this disease may be attributed to the manner in which children, of
the most susceptible ages for the infection, are crowded together into
our elementary schools, without any sufficient attempt—as by the
systematic medical inspection of scholars—to ensure that they are
free from infection. It is admittedly a difficult matter to put into
operation, but the sort of medical inspection required may be—from
my own experience—very rapidly performed and with very little
hindrance to school work, and it is already being practiced on a
large scale in America, with the most promising results.
The outbreaks of Typhoid Fever at Maidstone and Lynn have
also been noteworthy incidents of the year. This subject is referred
to in the body of the Report.
The vital returns of the Parish of Stoke Newington for 1897 show
an increase in the general death-rate. It is satisfactory to find that
this increase is almost entirely due to non-communicable disease
among parishioners who have reached the later years of life. The
deaths among those of 60 years and upwards furnished, for instance,
33 per cent. of the total deaths during 1897, whereas in 1896 they