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39
mortality from zymotic diseases.
In the year under review, 32 persons of all classes succumbed
to zymotic diseases, which is exactly double the
number registered from the same class of maladies in the
preceding year. Small-pox, Scarlatina, and Diphtheria
contributed 19 deaths to the register of the past year,
against only five in 1862, whilst Measles, Whooping-cough,
Fever, and Diarrhoea, were likewise in excess of 10
against 8.
The three deaths from Small-pox—a disease which had
for a long series of years been absent from this locality—is
not satisfactory, and is less so, seeing that to a most
stubborn resistance of vaccination on the part of some, and
to an utter indifference to its prophylactic power on the
part of others, must be attributed much of the suffering,
and I believe, the whole of the mortality registered in the
parish, as the result of this pestilence.
The amount of ignorance prevailing on the subject of
vaccination, and on the advisability of adopting a perfect
system of isolation in Small-pox cases, is something
extraordinary, and more than ever indicates the necessity
of further legislation for the protection of the community
generally against the indiscretion and indifference of the
few whom the law is at present unable to reach. In the
absence of this legislation, much, however, might be accomplished
by district visitors and others in making the poor
feel ther individual responsibility in relation to this disease.
The committees of public schools, the employers of labour
in workshops and factories, indeed, all persons having the
control of children and of servants might do immense
service to the cause of sanitation, by judiciously insisting