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39
PREVALENCE AND FATALITY OF ZYMOTIC DISEASES.
With reference to zymotic diseases, it is satisfactory to
note a considerable decrease in the number of deaths,
(from 24 to 16), in favour of 1862, compared with 1861.
Whilst scarlatina numbered 15 victims in 1861, there
were but 2 deaths registered from this cause in the
past year. From neither small-pox nor measles were
there registered any deaths whatever, though the latter
disease prevailed extensively at the decline of the year.
Small-pox began to shew itself in December, in the year
under review, and resulted in death in one instance at
the Small-Pox Hospital, where the case was, of course,
registered, and hence is not noted in the mortality table
appended to this Report. Since this period, the disease
has unfortunately spread to some extent amongst all
classes of inhabitants; but less amongst the parish poor
than any other class. Only one fatal case has happily
been registered in the present year, and down to the time
of presenting this Report. It is also satisfactory to be
able to state, that in no case within my own knowledge
has the disease proved fatal, or caused disfigurement in
those who had been previously and successfully vaccinated.
In both the fatal cases it should be noted, the sufferers
were wholly without this protection.
In a series of local reports on small-pox emanating
from the Metropolitan Medical Officers of Health, and
recently published in the Medical Times and Gazette, the
practice of re-vaccination is very generally advocated.
I have myself a strong opinion that vaccination performed
even simultaneously with the first appearance of the
small-pox eruption will, in the majority of persons, not
only greatly modify the disease, but arrest its fatal