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5
seen to have attended several of the other classes of disease ;
thus, the Tubercular class, including Consumption, Diseases
of the Brain and Nervous System, and, principally, Diseases
of the Organs of Bespiration (exclusive of Consumption)
contributed, by their excessive fatality, mainly to the higher
death-rate of the past year.
sickness.
The amount of sickness (or more correctly the number
of cases of sickness coming under treatment) during the
year, is calculated at about 55 per cent. of the population,
and that one death resulted from every 26 attacks. This estimate,
as explained in former reports, is made by assuming
the proportion which the deaths bear to cases of sickness
amongst the parochial poor as the proportion which the
total deaths bear to the total cases of sickness, amongst all
classes, and is the only present means by which the amount
of sickness from which, the mortality of the District
has resulted, can be even approximately arrived at.
Looking to the circumstances that an excessive mortality
during the past year was common to the whole Metropolis,
and to very generally the same extent, and that the
cause of such excess was not due to any unusual fatality
from epidemic diseases, it may be fairly inferred that the
higher mortality of this District was due to general causes
(probably climatic) rather than to those local ones which come
more immediately under the remedial control of sanitation.
sanitation.
A larger number of feet of new sewerage than even last
year appears to have been constructed throughout the
District, and in Table VI., in the Appendix will be
found recorded numerous other sanitary measures of a
beneficial character that have been completed since the
issue of the previous Beport.
Before any systematic attempts were made to improve
the sanitary condition of this District, there can be no doubt
Fever was both very frequent and very fatal. Subsequently